WHEN THE BEST IS THE ENEMY OF THE GOOD

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

WHEN THE BEST IS THE ENEMY OF THE GOOD

The US Navy SEALs have a special exercise: they tie a person's hands behind his back, tie his ankles and throw him into a pool 3 meters deep.

His task is to survive for five minutes.

As is often the case in SEAL training, the vast majority of recruits fail. Many immediately panic and start screaming to be pulled out. Some try to swim, but they go under water, and they have to be caught and pumped out. Over the years of training, there have even been deaths several times.

But some people manage to cope with the task, and knowledge of two rather contradictory rules helps them in this.

The first rule is paradoxical: the more you try to keep your head above water, the more likely you are to drown.

With your hands and feet tied, it is impossible to keep yourself on the surface of the water for five minutes. Moreover, your erratic twitching will only help you drown even faster. The trick is to let yourself sink to the bottom of the pool. Then you should forcefully push off the bottom with your feet and, when you are thrown to the surface, take a quick breath and start the whole process again.

(At the age of 8, not yet knowing about the existence of the US Navy SEALs, I thus rescued at sea in Zatoka, when I found myself at a depth and missed the inflatable ball which I had previously held on.) side of the coast. So jumps and jumped to the shallows)

Oddly enough, this technique does not require any superhuman strength or special endurance. You don't even need to be able to swim, rather, on the contrary, you are required to not even try to do it. You should not resist the laws of physics, you should use them to save your life.

The second lesson is a little more obvious, but also paradoxical: the more you panic, the more oxygen you need, and the more likely you are to pass out and drown. Exercise turns your survival instinct against yourself: the more intense your desire to breathe, the less opportunity you will have for it. And the more intense your will to live, the more likely you are to die.

Thus, this exercise is not for physical strength, and not for willpower. It is aimed at the ability to control oneself in a critical situation. Will a person be able to suppress their instinctive impulses? Will he be able to relax in the face of potential death? Will he be able to risk his life for the sake of accomplishing any higher task?

Self-control is much more important than swimming. It is more important than physical strength, stamina or ambition. It is more important than intelligence, education and how well a person looks in a luxurious Italian suit.

This skill - the ability not to succumb to instincts when it is what you most want - is one of the most important skills that anyone can develop in themselves. And not only for service in the navy. Just for life.

Most people believe that effort and reward are directly related. We believe that if we work twice as much, the result will be twice as good. And if we pay twice as much attention to our loved ones, then we will be loved twice as much. And if we shout twice as loud, our words will become twice as convincing.

That is, it is assumed that most of what happens in our life is described by a line graph, and that there is a “unit” of reward per “unit” of effort.

But let me tell you (to me, who hoped that if you drink twice as much as usual, Red Bull, then this article will be done with twice as fast) - this is almost never the case. Most of what is happening in the world does not follow linear laws. The linear relationship is observed only in the most primitive, monotonous and boring things - when driving a car, when filling out documents, when cleaning a bathroom, etc. In all these cases, if you do something for two hours, you get twice as much as if you did it for an hour. But this is due to the fact that there is no need to think or invent.

Most often, a linear relationship is not observed precisely because monotonous mechanical actions make up a smaller part of our life. Much of our work is complex and requires mental and emotional effort.

Thus, most activities follow a diminishing yield curve.

The law of diminishing returns states that from some point on, an increase in investment does not bring an equivalent return. The classic example is money. The difference between earning $ 20,000 and $ 40,000 is huge, it is completely life changing. The difference between earning $ 120,000 and $ 140,000 only means that your car will have nicer seat heaters. The difference between earnings of $ 127,020,000 and $ 127,040,000 is generally within the statistical margin of error.

The concept of diminishing returns applies to most all events that are complex or new. The more often you shower, the more chicken wings you eat at dinner, the longer you practice the ritual of annual trips to your mother - the less significant each of these events is (may my mother forgive me).

Another example: productivity studies show that we only work really efficiently in the first four to five hours of our working day. This is followed by a sharp drop in productivity - to the point where the difference between working 12 hours and 16 hours is almost invisible (apart from sleep deprivation).

The same rule applies to friendship. A single friend is always vital. Having two friends is always better than having one. But if the 10th is added to 9 friends, then this will change little in your life. And 21 friends instead of 20 only bring problems with remembering names.

The concept of diminishing returns works for sex, food, sleep, drinking alcohol, exercising in the gym, reading books, taking vacations, hiring employees, consuming caffeine, saving money, scheduling meetings, studying, video games, and masturbation - the examples are endless. The more you do something, the less reward you get for each subsequent action. Almost everything works according to the law of diminishing returns.

But there is another curve that you have probably never seen or heard of before - this is the inverse (inverted) yield curve.

An inverse yield curve demonstrates those cases where effort and reward are negatively correlated, that is, the more effort you put into something, the less you achieve.

And it is this law that is at work in the example of the "fur seals". The more effort you put in to stay on the surface, the more likely you are to fail. Likewise, the stronger your urge to breathe, the more likely you are to choke.

Perhaps now you are thinking - well, why do we need to know all this? We're not going to dive into the pool with our legs and arms tied! What do we care about inverse curves?

Indeed, there are few things in life that work according to the law of the inverse curve. But the few that exist are extremely important. I even dare to argue that all the most important experiences and events in life work according to the law of an inverse curve.

Effort and reward are in direct proportion to performing primitive tasks. Effort and reward work under the law of diminishing returns when the action is complex and multidimensional.

But when it comes to our psyche, i.e.about what happens exclusively in our own minds, the relationship between effort and reward is inverse.

The pursuit of luck takes you even further away from it. The search for emotional peace is only more thrilling. The desire for more freedom often makes us feel even stronger our lack of freedom. The need to be loved prevents us from loving ourselves.

Aldous Huxley once wrote: “The more often we force ourselves to do something against our own will, the less often we succeed. Knowledge and results come only to those who have learned the paradoxical art of doing without doing, combining relaxation with activity."

The fundamental ingredients of our psyche are paradoxical. This is due to the fact that when we consciously try to evoke a certain mood in ourselves, the brain automatically begins to resist it.

This is the “Law of the opposite”: the expectation of a positive result is itself a negative factor; readiness for a negative result is a positive factor.

This applies to most (if not all) aspects of our mental health and relationships:

The control. The more we seek to control our own feelings and impulses, the more we worry about our incontinence. Our emotions are involuntary and often uncontrollable, the desire to take control further intensifies them. Conversely, the more calmly we are about our own feelings and impulses, the more opportunities we have to direct them in the right direction.

Freedom. Ironically, the constant pursuit of more freedom is placing more and more barriers in front of us. The willingness to accept freedom within certain boundaries allows us to independently determine these boundaries.

Happiness. Striving to be happy makes us less happy. Reconciliation with failure makes us happy.

Safety. The desire to feel safe breeds insecurity in us. Reconciling uncertainty makes us feel safe.

Love. The more we try to make others love us, the less they will be inclined to do so. And more importantly, the less we will love ourselves.

Respect. The more we demand respect for ourselves, the less we will be respected. The more we ourselves respect others, the more respect we will be.

The trust. The more we persuade people to trust us, the less often they do it. The more we trust others, the more we get back trust.

Confidence. The more we try to feel confident in ourselves, the more we worry and worry. A willingness to admit our shortcomings allows us to feel more comfortable in our own skin.

Self improvement. The more we strive for excellence, the more acutely we feel that this is not enough. At the same time, the willingness to accept ourselves as we are allows us to grow and develop, because in this case we are too busy to pay attention to secondary things.

Significance: the more significant and deep we consider our own life, the more superficial it is. The more we attach importance to the lives of others, the more important we become to them.

All these internal, psychological experiences work according to the law of an inverse curve, because they are all generated at the same point: in our consciousness. When you desire happiness, your brain is both the source of that desire and the object that needs to feel it.

When it comes to this high, abstract, existential reasoning, our brains become like a dog chasing its own tail. To the dog this chase seems quite logical - after all, if with the help of the chase he gets everything else that is necessary for his dog's life, then why should it be different this time?

However, a dog will never be able to catch its own tail. The faster it catches up, the faster its tail runs away. The dog lacks wide gaze, it does not see that it and the tail are one.

Our task is to wean our brain from chasing its own tail. Give up the pursuit of meaning, freedom and happiness, because they can only be felt when you stop chasing them. Learn to achieve your goal by refusing to pursue this goal. Show yourself that the only way to reach the surface is to let yourself sink.

How to do it? Refuse. Surrender. Surrender. Not because of weakness, but because of the understanding that the world is wider than our consciousness. Recognize your fragility and limitations. Its finitude in the endless stream of time. This refusal to try to control is not about weakness, but about strength, because you choose to give up those things that are beyond your control. Accept that not always and not everyone will love you, that there are failures in life, and that you will not always find a hint of what to do next.

Give up the struggle with your own fears and insecurities, and when you think that you will soon drown, you will reach the bottom and can push off from it, this will be salvation.

Original text:

Translation: Dmitry Fomin.