Category: Thinking

Combating Anxiety with the Five Whys

~ Veselin ~ 24 Comments

Wars, inflation, health, aging, deadlines, death, AI, work woes – the adult life has no shortage of triggers for anxiety. These worries appear to stick around for a long time with sudden spikes that make them worse. Yet, anxiety rarely feels useful – we are not changing the course of history by worrying about it. How can we tone it down without solving world’s hunger?

I’ve tried a variety of tactics and each has its own place. I never miss the chance to include the subject of thinking errors. They are a major source of anxiety and self-fulfilling prophecies. However, today I’d like to share about the Five Whys, a method of using your non-intuitive slow thinking. The whole reason why I wrote my previous long post about intuition was so I can write this one without explaining what’s a slow brain and why intuition can work against us.

What Are the Five Whys?

When faced with a problem, you ask “why?” at least five times, using the answer from the previous question as the basis for the next. Originally developed by Toyota as a problem-solving tool in manufacturing, it seems to work well for self-discovery. It forces us to goo several layers deeper than the shallow obvious reason for a problem. Here’s a current made-up example.

  1. “I’m worried that the USA import tariffs may trigger a global crisis” – “Why does that bother you?”
  2. “I’m worried it might affect my job” – “Okay, it may or may not, Why does that bother you?”
  3. “I’m worried I may lose income” – “This doesn’t sound great but still, why are you worried about it?“
  4. “Because I may be unable to provide and my family may suffer” – “Family is there for good and bad. Why does a loss of income, even for a longer term, worry you?”
  5. “Because I tie my self-worth to how others (or family) perceives me”

And we find something deeper than just “Oh no, Trump”. We’ve reached a core fear that’s fueling the anxiety.

The Core Fears

Asking the five whys for fears appears to bring us down to the same one or two true fears and these seem to be similar for most people. For example (absolutely not a complete or scientific list):

  • Fear of failure
  • Fear of judgment
  • Fear of rejection
  • Fear of being alone
  • Fear of being a burden

The process of tying one or more of these (or a similar core fear) to some uncertainty-inducing current event can make us panic essentially for nothing. No, Trump won’t make your significant other stop loving you, neither can a potential risk coming to life take away your past experiences. Other things can do that, like being mean, or not listening, but not Trump.

Have I recently shared that we should always be kind? The past acts of kindness, for example, cannot be taken away if you get run over by a car, get sick, encounter dangerous people, communists, experience inflation, or a are attacked by a foreign army.

Why it helps

Anxiety thrives in ambiguity.

Bringing light to the true fears can take away some of their power. The news will never stop blasting the horrors of the day and they will always be awful because this is what makes us watch news. But our deepest fears can be nearly constant for decades, like old friends we don’t really like or want. Nothing is ever going to be perfect.

Brene Brown wrote a book called “The Gifts of Imperfection” where she describes the loss of self, direction, purpose, meaning, safety, certainty, and future. She asks us to seek for our internal self-worth. We are worthy and should accept that, should find reasons for it, and should also not undermine it too much. There is always a need to improve but never a need to be perfect, risk-free, or error-free.

I summarized that book in 2019 with the following text:

If you’re a mess and vulnerable, you are not alone. We are all together in this.

So, to tie it all together, The Five Whys is a method to get anxiety to a point where the level is within Brene Brown’s “This is fine”.

Should I trust my intuition?

~ Veselin ~ 13 Comments

We make decisions many times per day. Most of them are quick, automatic, and unimportant. However, some choices can have a dramatic impact over our future. For example, a choice of one university over another can determine the career path. The choice of a partner. Buying one house over another, and particularly the financial aspect of that choice. Buying an old car with cash vs a new with credit. We are made in a way that follows the heart, which is essentially using intuition rather than judgement.

The problem with fast decisions

Our brains have an incredible capacity to produce quick, intuitive, and wrong answers to any problem. Once our action doesn’t solve the problem, we often have a bigger problem and a new chance to try solving it. Repeating the same approach can lead to a chain of bad choices. Feelings appear to be a force multiplier and can make any situation much worse than the original problem.

Is it true and why why is that? One theory that I liked comes from the work of Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow, which I read in 2016. It’s been quoted before on this blog as it’s essential to how I see the world.

The theory is that we are adjusted to living in the bush where a lion can hide and eat us. The intuitive response to anything moving in the bush has to be quick in order to prevent us from being eaten. There’s absolutely no need to have a quick and intuitive response when the car dealership makes an offer to us. In the past, you only make one mistake and you get eaten. In the modern world, the movement in the bush is not a lion.

Kahneman says that our brains have two modes. System 1, Intuition, produces quick and wrong decisions. System 2, slow thinking, can sometimes produce not wrong solutions.

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.

Another famous book, called Crucial Conversations, explores the area of arguments. The recurring theme is that you won’t drive if you’re drunk. Don’t drive under the influence [of alcohol]. Just like driving, the choice of words during an important conversation can be of lasting consequences. Don’t make important choices under the influence [of emotion]. Our boss wrongs us. Intuitive response? Something with the F word. A quote from the book:

Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.

To make the matter worse, not only is the emotional response bad for us, but it’s also predictable on a group level. It gets exploited by politicians, marketers, grifters, and more ordinary humans who’ve learned how to do it. It’s an appeal to emotion, which makes you susceptible to mistakes. Enter that car, hold the wheel, feel the smell. You’ll love it. It can be yours.

Productive emotions have been used by mass media to increase the sales since at least the discovery of the tabloids (Ryan Holiday, Trust me, I’m lying). A fear-mongering title sells the newspaper. Anger, Fear, Greed, Guilt, Lust can make us respond in a certain way as a group. These switch us into System-1 mode and we make decision not in our favor based on intuition. We can be fooled and negatively impact our or our group’s future.

The problem with slow decisions

It not possible to switch our reptile system-1 brain off and it’s also unsafe. Gavin de Becker explores the fear and anger in his book The Gift of Fear. He lists pre-incident indicators in a long list of possible violent outcomes. For example, a group of young men hang out by an pedestrian underpass. One of them peaks at me and my heart drops. It’s the lion in the bush of our modern world. There’s no time, just turn around and run for help.

The book also covers the area of domestic violence and the tendency of people to ignore clear signs of coming attacks. A possible conclusion from that book is that when people show you who they really are, trust them.

Dr. Albert Ellis classifies the underreaction to incidents as Rationalization, one of the three groups of thinking errors from his book How To Keep People From Pushing Your Buttons. The modern day understanding of Rationalization classifies under it a group of behaviors that justify violence and wrongdoing by making up reasons for the violent behaviors where rational reasons do not exist.

So, all in all, ignoring the intuitive response is not good either.

How do I make the difference

Perhaps most decision making in the area of physical safety should use the intuitive brain first. Take ourselves out of danger and turn on the System-2. Anything in the area of purchases, investments, money, work, business, programming, health should use the slow brain. Any classification like that is prone to exceptions but the bare awareness of it can help, particularly when a manipulation tactic is being used on us. A countdown timer. A limited time offer. It’s just one, now or never, “I have five other offers for this apartment”. Yeah, sure you do.

None of the quoted books speaks about guaranteed good decisions. They all speak about probabilities. You can meet someone, say yourself “Oh, I’ll spend my life with them” 15 seconds later, and proceed to actually do it, and have a happy life. It’s not likely but it happens.

Ending with a reminder about an old post. Never miss an opportunity to be kind. The world is harsh and we can’t change it. We can only change our responses to events. Love and kindness make everything more tolerable.

Do you believe in karma?

~ Veselin ~ 9 Comments

Karma means that our actions accumulate imaginary good and bad points, which we eventually cash out. While we can find anecdotal evidence this is true, it can also be a major source of anxiety. The expectations usually don’t match reality.

Let’s imagine, for a moment, that karma exists in two forms:

  1. Positive Karma – You do something good and receive an unrelated reward.
  2. Negative Karma – You do something bad and get penalized in an unrelated way.

Negative Karma

FAFO (F*** Around and Find Out) undeniably exists—actions have consequences, sometimes immediate and harsh. Speeding increases your chances of a crash. Drinking and driving can still get you pulled over and your car taken. FAFO.

The idea of negative karma assumes that good and bad karma points don’t cancel each other out. You can save an abandoned kitten, put it in your car, then drink and drive—and FAFO will produce the same result, regardless of your earlier good deed. The kitten might even increase the odds of a crash.

The problem with believing in negative karma is that life constantly hits us with setbacks. Small ones, big ones, unexpected ones. Was that bad news today caused by my road rage last night? Probably not. A lot of what happens to us is random. Believing in karma can make us assume responsibility for things completely unrelated to our actions, which can be mentally exhausting.

Positive Karma

The reverse-FAFO is even more suspicious-the idea that doing good leads to good things happening to us.

Giving money to a beggar might make us feel great. But was it truly a “good” act? Maybe, maybe not. Then, five minutes later, something positive happens. Was it caused by our kindness, or was it just coincidence? Likely the latter. Most good deeds don’t trigger rewards, and many aren’t even really good.

This positive karma idea ties to a cognitive distortion called “Heaven’s Reward Fallacy”—the belief that if we put in effort and do good, we are guaranteed a positive outcome. Sometimes, yes. But just as often, the opposite happens.

People have understood this for thousands of years. In Bulgaria, there’s a saying: “Do good and throw it behind your back.” In other words, do good without expecting a reward. Some of that is also in the Bible (Matthew 6:1-4). The biblical positive karma exists as long as you do your good deeds in secrecy.

Do I Believe in Karma?

I believe we should be kind and understanding toward each other—not because the universe will reward us, but because life is tough. The only way to make it tolerable is if we all make an effort and help each-other.

So, do I believe in karma? No. But I do believe in the principles behind it: We should hold ourselves to a high standard, take responsibility for our actions, and strive to do good—without expecting the universe to pay us back.

Why Doesn’t Offler Forbid Chocolate?

~ Veselin ~ 3 Comments

Offler is the Crocodile God from Discworld. He is known for his crocodilian features, mumbling speech, and pragmatic rules. He knows how to keeps his followers. One of the pillars of his faith is that he wouldn’t impose a ban on chocolate because people wouldn’t listen anyway.

Nuggan, the God of paperclips and unnecessary paperwork, forbids Chocolate. Chocolate, among other 100s of things, is an abomination, perhaps because it stains the unnecessary paper. Funnily, as a result of that, his country is a main exporter of chocolate.

The book, although I don’t quite remember which one, implies that a God who forbids chocolate will eventually be forgotten and replaced by another God who doesn’t forbid chocolate. Nuggan, as of the last Discworld novel, is still around. He outlived his creator, Sir Terry Pratchett, and the spiritual disconnect between him and Offler remained unresolved.

Why I’m writing all of that? Spent last 24 hours wtf-ing with Bulgarian election news. There’s no Offlers in our political scene.

A quote about mistakes

~ Veselin ~ 7 Comments

Found this gem on X today:

The beauty of doing nothing is that you can do it perfectly. Only when you do something is it almost impossible to do it without mistakes. Therefore people who are contributing nothing to society, except their constant criticisms, can feel both intellectually and morally superior.

— Thomas Sowell

Is it right, though? Can we make mistakes when we drive? Or when we land airplanes? Most areas of life have mistake tolerance, and the mistake tolerance gives an opportunity for risk taking. However, some life situations do not allow that. But in any case, the oversimplification of otherwise very complex problems feels pleasant to the eye. If you’re active, try to change things, you’ll make mistakes, will learn from them, and most of the times it will be okay.