Please Read, Updated preamble for - ONE LOONEY IDEA -
In 2006, we began a relationship with Ethiopia that we cannot turn our backs on.
In Ethiopia, the majority of people build a life with less than a dollar a day.
A dollar a day does not buy basic necessities.
We all have challenges.
Impulsivity is a choice of the privileged.
The privileged have a responsibility to the community.
PLEASE consider pledging your support to me, through financially supporting the work of Canadian Humanitarian in Ethiopia. My original goal was to get FIFTY people to pledge a dollar a day for the 365 days of this challenge. I'm not sure why, but that doesn't seem to resonate with you--my readers, friends and family.
Give what you feel you can toward my campaign—no amount is too small, every dollar makes a difference in the life of another—or continue to make a difference through your own chosen channels. The link to my personal pledge page is below.
Betam amisegnalo.
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| I might be around 22 or 23 years old in this picture. I am standing with my cousin Kris, at one of our favourite family places--my grandparents lakeside farm. This was a large family reunion in the late 80's. Kris died a short four, or five years later, and he has been missed every day. |
The Two Wolves
One evening, an old Cherokee told his grandson about life, about a battle that goes on inside people. “A fight is happening inside of me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil—it is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other is good—it is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside of you—and inside every other person too.”
The grandson thought about it for a minute, and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”
The old Cherokee replied, “The one that you feed.”
My life, is like this.
In the last three decades, every aspect of my life has grown. I worked full time. I bought a dog. I needed a Toyota 4Runner, and then a house. I filled them both with stuff. I got married, and became a bonus parent. We needed a bigger house. My dog died. I bought another one. We had another child; we needed a station wagon, and a bigger house. Another child came, and another; we needed to renovate, and landscape, and renovate. We got a cat. We filled everything with stuff—lots and lots of stuff. The stuff drove me crazy. I needed a place to retreat to. We built a cottage.
On the surface, It looks like greed, maybe even desire. But if you wade through all of the stuff, there is something else lying at the bottom.
A need to hustle for a sense of belonging.
Adult life begins with a vague sense of our value system. Values are based on the environment and people who raised us. So naturally, we have values that serve us well, and others that don’t . . . but are part of us nonetheless. Those values lay a foundation, upon which we pile our living.
It is not only children who mimic one another. Where we live and who we expose ourselves to affects the habits we develop. Habits can also be formed by intention. Old habits are hard to break, and new habits are hard to form. If we create habits based only on social expectation, we will run headlong into a value clash. We will find ourselves doing things that are contradictory to our foundational values.
Day by day, we develop habits, ways in which we engage with life. We constantly send and receive messages that may or may not fit our deeper value system. An internal fight ensues. The lips of each wolf curl back to reveal sharp, and dangerous fangs, a low snarl begins, and each raises its hackles—one wolf wants to assert dominance over the other.
"Who will win?"
Every day, an adult makes tens of thousands of “remotely conscious decisions”. A Time article, entitled, “Making Choices: How Your Brain Decides,” suggests that the brain “relies on two separate networks: one that determines the overall value—the risk versus reward—of individual choices, and another that guides how you ultimately behave.” These are named value-based decision making, and cognitive control.
Think of the two wolves: when we develop strategies for navigating the world, we can feed our cognitive-based system, while starving the value-based decision limb, or vice versa. Though this is over-simplified, and does not take into account psychiatric conditions that affect the brain, it illustrates a certain harmony between two systems.
The article says: “The overall control of impulses is split between the two networks […]. When the cognitive control regions are working well, distractions are ignored and behaviors occur in the appropriate context; when valuation is appropriate, choices are made that are likely to be beneficial in the long run. However, when either one of them goes offline, impulsive behaviors get stronger and may not be inhibited.”
Impulsivity is defined as, “a multifactorial construct that involves a tendency to act on a whim, displaying behaviour characterized by little or no forethought, reflection, or consideration of the consequences.” Moreover, when impulsive actions have positive outcomes, they tend not to be seen as signs of impulsivity, but as acts of spontaneity. Take retail therapy for example: it makes you feel good, and on occasion, look good too, garnering you praise from your peers. Or look at buying a snack when you are hungry—the positive outcome: you are no longer hungry, and your whole mood improves.
I had no idea that impulsivity had pervaded my life. We have the means to support this repetitive habit. When there is no immediate negative outcome, how will I motivate myself to change?
Let’s look back to DAY ONE.
“This challenge, for me, is about habits. How long does it take to develop a new habit? It comes down to motivation, which is affected by the emotion that surrounds a behaviour. We have to stop and ask: Why do we do the things we do? […] Habit experts all say some variation of the same thing: start small when making a change. I am not going to do that. Starting today—January 15th—I am going to be a responsible consumer; I am going to spend an average of one looney a day; and I am going to be a mindful role model for my kids.”
Start small, they said.
I am embarrassed to say that in week TWENTY-TWO, I cannot measure much change. Over the last two decades, my value-based decision making system has been overfed. I unwittingly subscribed to the “That looks good. I want it. It will make me feel better. I deserve it. I must have it,” dogma. But I am not going to despair, because, in Psychology Today, I read that the “behavioural patterns we repeat most often are literally etched into our neural pathways.” Repetition plus time creates change. There is no way to measure in days what can only be realized in years.
Moreover, with motivation being the greatest factor in habit change, I need to set some small tangible goals. Very loosely, I have said, “I want to become an intentional consumer.” There is nothing tangible about that; my brain is capable of justifying everything that I purchase or consume. :(
Each day I will walk with the wolves. The one that is fed may be the “successful” one at any given moment, but the reality is that the other wolf does not disappear. Instead, it waits in the shadows for the strong one to falter, or for your attention to shift. Ultimately, the wolves need to work together to create a state of harmony. We need both cognitive and value-based decisions. Attend to both wolves; feed the one you want to win, and extend the arm of compassion to the other.
