KNOW YOURSELF & YOUR CHALLENGE

In George Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman, the Devil asks Don Juan why he works so hard to understand himself. His evocative reply: “Why, to be able to choose the path of greatest advantage instead of yielding in the direction of the least resistance. . . . To be in hell is to drift, to be in heaven is to steer.”

We don’t receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves

after a journey that no one can take for us, nor spare us

— Marcel Proust

If you do not steer, your course will be determined by external sources of control, such as excessive appetite for a substance [e,g, alcohol, drugs, food], an activity [e.g., sex/pornography, gambling/day-trading, gaming, device use, etc.], or as some other self-sabotaging influence [e.g., hurting loved ones].

Mousetraps produce their intended results because the mouse’s behavior is determined by the immediate (not the long-term) payoffs of its actions. The PIG [Problem of Immediate Gratification] is the name for this principle: Small but immediate payoffs are much more influential than large but delayed payoffs. The PIG drives self-sabotage in both mice and men (women too). We benefit from being smarter than mice because abstract processing enables us to understand traps such as the PIG and use these cause-and-effect principles to steer.

The PIG, as well as the other cause-and-effect principles that underlie the addictive traps, are universal but nobody has your particular vulnerabilities. To extricate yourself from your unique trap, you’ll have to understand how it works.

If you want to be free of dependence on external sources of control: find out the price and pay it

If you know your opponent and know yourself

you need not fear the result of a hundred battles

— Sun Tsu

The price is the investment of attention to research yourself and your opponent

1. Knowledge of yourself: Without an understanding of what causes you to react to the things that happen as you do, you cannot be free; you cannot govern yourself and you will always remain a slave to external sources of control. This is why in all ancient teachings the first demand at the beginning of the way to liberation was: “Know Thyself!“

2. Knowledge of your opponent [your challenge]: The PIG is just one of the weapons your opponent can use to pull you to bad outcomes. However, once you understand them, you can use these same cause-and-effect principles to promote more advantageous outcomes.

Recurring patterns of self-sabotage motivate folks to seek treatment. Different treatment providers use very different strategies to help their clients follow a more advantageous path. Good therapists, regardless of their approach, offer their clients something of great value: the dispassionate perspective of a collaborative observer. The therapist can see things that you cannot. On the other hand, your personal experience [where the action happens] is not available to the observer. The key to unlocking your trap is to understand it from both the inside and the outside—from both the first-person perspective of the client and from the third-person perspective of the observer.