Rock-Bottom Zugzwang – Wit's End with Josh
The biggest transformations seem to come when the pain of not changing is greater than the pain of changing.
The thing is, it’s always relative. If the worst thing that has happened to me is that my mommy said I can’t get ice cream, it’s still the worst thing that’s happened to me. And if I’m 6 years old, I don’t have much data to refer back to and compare. So a tantrum ensues. As a 21-year old, the worst thing that happened in my life was getting kicked out of school and off the baseball team. Compared to an orphan growing up in an active war-zone, my plights were trivial — but in the context of a charmed life, it’s a rock bottom period.
These moments are important because its like a psychological zugzwang — backed into a corner and forced to make a move. I think there are two options at this point: taking responsibility or eventual ruin. If there’s a confluence of relative-rock-bottoms and the willingness to say ‘it’s my fault,’ then, I believe, we’re in a plastic, malleable state.
In this open state comes the drive to “do the work,” which is often talked about, but never really explained. Once we realize the existence of hidden parts of ourselves, we can see undesirable attachments, patterns, stories we tell ourselves, through a new lens to analyze the roots and usefulness and consequences of them. The “influence” we have on our ‘mental health’ lies here, I believe. Through the interrelated triad between the physical (ex. breathing), physiological (ex. HRV), and psychological (ex. thoughts and mental commands) we can inject more intentionality for things to which we’re attached.
It’s the difference between being ‘swept-up’ by life versus devising a useful selection process.
We’re mammals…and share a lot of behavioral circuitry as other mammals, like dogs. Reinforcement schedules are the most powerful shaping force for influencing a dog’s behavior — same with ourselves.
So often, I hear people talking about doing things for ‘their mental health,’ like a Netflix-on-the-couch-for-8-hours kind of day. But I think this comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of what mental health actually is. Rather than it being a state of contentedness in the moment, I think it’s more the long-term fitness of the mental software we run for a successful future. A passive approach leads to drifting, which leads to getting swept up by strong, macro-forces, and led astray. An active approach, obviously, sounds preferable. But the pre-requisites — recipe list — is effortful and painful. Rock bottom is effective for many because there’s no other alternative than taking an ‘active approach’ which looks like: interrogating ourselves and our motives, using the insights to aim at something better, take ownership for everything that happens, keep an open mind for new opportunities, and persist… on and on and on.
