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The lessons learned in river boating apply throughout life. One of life's greatest lessons lies in the way in which we cope with periods of relative calm and turbulence, with simplicity and with chaos. Read More
Awesome!
Dr.,
I first heard of your blog when I discovered it doing a search for articles dealing with the psychology of Batman. That series was very entertaining. I find this current article on dealing with life's uncertainties extremely satisfying. Not many people are able to find the balance you speak of. Do you think this is a learned behavior, or are some people born with a natural balance?
thanks
Thanks to you, whomever you are. As to your question - I'll give my usual reply, which is all of the above + more. Research suggests that approaches to control are a personality variable - e.g., see classic theory by Rotter on "locus of control." Some people are more control oriented than others. It is my belief that this is influenced by temperament (i.e., genetic loading and present at birth). I'm biased, however, because I believe I am overcontrolling and I see the same trait in my daughter, which appeared in the form of very intense terrible-2's which continues today into her 4's. However, one can learn mindfullness, "radical acceptance" and so on as skills - Marcia Linnehan has done the best work in this area, along with the more orthodox and cult-like (but still great) work by Steven Hayes. Social context also influences things, life circumstance, and so on....
thanks so much for commenting... I'm going to try to write once a week for a while to maintain a better blog-habit; so please stay tuned...
-Dr. Dave
Concepts of Control and other East-West Differences
Dear Dr. Dave,
I have also been enjoying your blog. It's a pleasure to read yours and the other PT blogs and I often find myself perusing them at lunch or on break. They can be very insightful and present interesting topics.
I was wondering if you might be able to point me to some more resources on differences between Western and Eastern mindsets. For instance, with this week's topic of control, I find that I tend to have the Western mindset you described - and often when life does hit the rapids, I become very stressed because I am unable to control circumstances.
In my Mandarin Chinese class, I've also recently learned about how Eastern culture often places more emphasis on the group (especially family) than on the individual. This is evident in many aspects of life, from politics to marriages to outlook on life.
I'm not saying one way is necessarily better than the other, but I find that seeing or reading about other ways of looking at the world really broadens my horizons - things I would take for granted (such as implicitly assuming that everyone's goal in life is personal improvement and improvement of one's circumstances) I now see as being different for different people, even to the point of reconsidering some of my views about life and judgements about others.
In any case, if you have other ideas about different types of mindsets in different cultures, that might make an interesting blog topic for some point in the future.
Thanks again, and I look forward to reading more,
Alex K.
Thanks Alex
Thanks Alex,
I don't have any good suggestions for books on the topic of Eastern vs. Western mindsets (I could look up primary references, but I'm guessing that journal articles are not what you'd be most interested in). I'm sure there are some good books out there. The key words to look for would be individualism vs. collectivism or some similar discrepancy. I agree with you - it is fascinating stuff. And the applications are broad and deep. I typically teach this material from the standpoint that Westerners, and particularly Americans, are the unusual ones here. Modern life, with all of its inventions (television, care and plane travel, the nuclear family, marriage for love, etc) are very new in cultural evolutionary time scale. And the individualism that has driven these inventions is radical when compared to the thousands of years of rootedness of humankind in collectivist thinking. Essentially - individualism (although great in many respects, and something I wouldn't want to give up) can lead to by-products such as high mental health rates, divorce, child and intimate partner abuse, and the highest incarceration rate in the world. Victor Frankl wrote about this phenomenon in the 50's in "Man's Search for Meaning." Freedom, when out of balance with responsibility, can cause a ruckus in biopsychosocial dynamics. More recently - my favorite teacher on this topic is Bruce Perry, who writes and lectures about the "fabric of society" and how modern living compounds the impacts of social diseases, such as child abuse and neglect. Anyway - you can probably tell that I agree with you here. I love my individualism and ability to control things, but I continue to work to cultivate modesty, compassion, and wisdom over time in order to lead a more balanced life.
-Dave
Great analogy - glad you are back
@Alex, you might like to try contemporary poet David Whyte and now late English philosopher Alan Watts.
www.davidwhyte.com doesn't have much around the internet but his books and CD's are on Amazon.
Watts was just pre-internet and people have put his interviews on youtube with various graphics.
@David
So happy you are back. I was just resolving to kick my RSS habit and as I mulled over something I am working on/procrastinating, I was looking at the list and noticed you had posted.
And what a great post. I am about to retweet it. The metaphor of being in contact with the river is the part I've been trying to formalize - maybe the wrong goal.
PS Did you mispell lessen/lesson?
Yes please do blog more often! I will be looking out for you.
Great analogy - glad you are back
@Alex, you might like to try contemporary poet David Whyte and now late English philosopher Alan Watts.
www.davidwhyte.com doesn't have much around the internet but his books and CD's are on Amazon.
Watts was just pre-internet and people have put his interviews on youtube with various graphics.
@David
So happy you are back. I was just resolving to kick my RSS habit and as I mulled over something I am working on/procrastinating, I was looking at the list and noticed you had posted.
And what a great post. I am about to retweet it. The metaphor of being in contact with the river is the part I've been trying to formalize - maybe the wrong goal.
PS Did you mispell lessen/lesson?
Yes please do blog more often! I will be looking out for you.
Thanks Jo
Hey Jo,
Thanks very much for filling in with some suggestions for more reading for Alex. I'm terrible at that - ironically the professor job does not allow me time to read - maybe after I'm over the tenure-hump this year? Anyway, formalizing something like the contact point between two systems - the boundary I guess, the manner, degree or tuning of coupling of two self-organizing systems I think is a bold and potentially powerful thing to do. For that one, I could actually recommend a possible book - Sync by Strogatz - but only if you are very math savy. Honestly, I was a bit lost reading most of it. Lesson? I don't think I misspelled it, no. I meant lesson like unit of learning.
See ya,
-Dave
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