TEST THE “FEEL GOOD” HYPOTHESIS BEFORE IMPLEMENTING The sheer amount of advice and material available for living a healthy life is simply overwhelming. Once there is a demand, there is a never ending stream of people willing to fill that demand. The field becomes flooded. It wouldn’t be a bad thing for us to have an unlimited supply of information to improve the quality of our lives if the information was all reliable but unfortunately it is not. After spending several decades in the fitness industry, it became very clear that the motivation behind new products was not the health and fitness of the consumer. The motivation was providing a product that the consumer would purchase. The well-being market is no different. Over the last century “happiness” has become more and more thought of as the goal in itself instead of living a constructive life. We have become consumers of things and ideas which promise happiness. Suppliers have readily come to the rescue to fill this new market. Just like the fitness market, the product provided is driven by what the consumers will “like” or buy and not by what it is which will satisfy their underlying desire for “happiness.” An idea does not need to improve the quality of the consumer’s life, it just needs to “feel” good. There are many things and ideas which just plain “feel” good that are neither true nor beneficial. There are also some things and idea which may “feel” bad which that are both true and beneficial. Neither feeling good nor bad are an error free method for directing our lives. This idea in itself sometimes feels “bad” because we want so bad to have a flawless system to guide us through the innumerable difficult choices we have to make throughout the course of our lives. We want cognitive ease. We want something easy to implement. Promises which require little thought and effort are readily accepted because we are not required to think about them and they please us. They do not demand any difficult mental or behavioral response on our part. Changing the trajectory of our lives requires effort. It often requires facing some painful aspects of our current beliefs and making difficult changes through persistent and mindful attention to our thoughts, behaviors, and habits. We should not simply ignore our feelings when faced with new information. Our feelings give us great insights into our own beliefs. Once we recognize the feeling then we can look a little deeper. We can test ideas against our greater knowledge. We can see if they fit into different scenarios. I have found that most statements which read “Always” or “Never” are usual false but are very appealing to our desires for cognitive ease. We all want to “feel” good. Our feelings are one of our most ancient guiding systems. The world we live in has become very complex since this guidance system first formed. Our cognitive apparatus has continued to grow. Our needs to survive in a very complex society require behaviors and habits which recognize the need for future planning. All these new elements to living has not made our “feeling” system obsolete but have made it not the primary guidance system it once used to be when we lived a much simpler existence. Both the complexity of the world in which we live and the cognitive abilities to navigate that world have changed. Take time to evaluate new ideas. Do not be easily led off track from a constructive life with ideas which immediately sound appealing. Look a little deeper. Look for evidence. Are there studies backing the ideas? Who conducted the studies? Where did the idea come from? IS it all encompassing? The questions go on and on. I find myself often “liking” an idea because it sounds right but later am disappointed when I test it with a few probing questions to find it has no foundation. ~Troy Murphy Flourishing Life Society
Posted on: Sat, 20 Dec 2014 14:00:01 +0000
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