Why the Wronger You Are, the Righter You Feel
How Your Limiting Beliefs Actually Make Sense (and what to do about it)
Human beings are smart. Though there may be arguable exceptions to that claim, it seems generally true that our intelligence comes from (or is expressed through) our amazing capacity to learn.
A baby bites its bottle, then bites its own finger, and notices the difference. We can say then that pain and pleasure not only teach us about the world, but also quite literally they teach us who we are (i.e. what is “me” versus “not me”).
But as basic and helpful as pain and pleasure are for shaping our understanding of reality, there is a critical design flaw. We are incredibly vulnerable to learning the wrong lessons.
And it isn’t about lacking evidence, or unconsciously ignoring evidence which would challenge our beliefs. Though that happens. The truth is that we most often believe the wrong thing because usually have lots and lots of genuinely credible and valid evidence to support that wrong belief.
Meaning that sometimes the wronger we are, the righter we feel.
A Horse in a Room
Imagine a horse stands in a large room with each of its four feet secured to a seperate floor tile. The tiles are the same except the one under its front left foot has been connected to electrical wires that can deliver a brief but painful shock and is controlled by a scientist in another room. When the scientist presses a button the electric shock is given, and the horse raises its front left foot off the tile.
Now, imagine rather than just randomly pressing the button, the scientist has arranged for a bell to ring just before the shock is given. Predictably, the horse very quickly learns to lift his foot when it hears the bell to avoid getting shocked.
Importantly, the scientist decides he doesn’t need to provide the shocks anymore. The ringing of the bell alone is enough to trigger the horse’s immediate (and eventually unconscious) reaction. So, the horse has made a simple association: bell = shock and shock = pain, therefore bell = pain.
Therefore it’s easy to understand why the horse would continue to raise its foot at the bell long after the shocks stopped. Even though the possibility of pain has disappeared, the horse continues to pathologically react as if it were real.
So far so good, right? This form of Pavlovian conditioning, I suspect, is familiar to most readers — if not learned explicitly in school, then through the briefest reflection upon one’s own experience. We constantly make associations similar to the horse (both conscious and unconscious) to the objects we encounter in our own world, which in turn greatly influence our future behavior.
A Perfect Strategy
But let’s return to the horse because here’s the non-obvious issue with its strategy: far from being a failure, its strategy is working brilliantly.
Even though no additional shocks are given after the initial few, the horse not only doesn’t realize the needlessness of its behavior, in fact, it actually becomes more and more convinced that it’s strategy is working. It raises its foot to avoid the shock, and success! No shock!
The more it does the wrong thing, the more it thinks it’s right.
And this is why it so critical to take moment and appreciate how similar this is to our own situation. Each of us has our own avoidance strategies that are unnecessarily limiting the ways in which we experience the world.
Maybe you “lift your foot up” when you avoid telling the server your order is wrong. Maybe you unconsciously resort to driving the exact same route to work even though you briefly considered going a new way.
I don’t know the specifics, but I do know that we all feel those pulls even when some other part of ourselves is wishing we’d ignore them.
The point is once these associations/beliefs/patterns get started, and it doesn’t take much to get them going, they take on a life of their own.
No doubt, you’ve noticed and corrected some of these limiting beliefs throughout your life, but you can’t reasonable expect yourself to catch them all. Because this doesn’t just apply to unconscious reactions. It works especially well on things we’ve thought through.
That’s the point. This is so scary because it means neither our experience nor any evidence we’ve gathered actually count for much. We can be wrong and never know it.
“Why do you see elephants hiding in trees? Because they are really good at it.”
Leave Your Foot Down (At Least Occasionally)
So what can we do? I think the only strategy to correct this learning death-spiral is to somehow break the pattern.
Most of the time, this happens by chance. Imagine the horse in the experiment is stretching its back legs, the bell rings, but it can’t lift its front left foot fast enough. Oh no! But wait….no shock. Just a bell. Suddenly, there’s an opportunity to revisit the whole association.
If we don’t want to be like the horse and wait for chance to shine upon us, the best strategy in life is to occasionally “leave your foot down.”
Meaning, question your most obviously true assumptions. Or sit with discomfort without trying to manipulate it in any way.
Leave your foot down because, worst case, your foot gets a little and temporary shock. Best case, you may avoid a lifetime of jumping through hoops no one is holding.
