Some college students participated in a study; they were told that the study is about food and perception of taste. They have been asked to come to the lab without eating at least 3 hours before that.
The researchers had just finished baking a fresh batch of chocolate chip cookies that made the room smell un-resistibly amazing. All students were presented with 2 bowls one containing the freshly baked cookies and the other had some radishes. The researchers left the room after giving clear instructions: Half of the students were asked to eat 2-3 radishes and do not touch the cookies and the other half (the lucky ones!) were asked to eat 2-3 cookies but no radishes.
The radish eaters had hard time exercising their will power. Yet none of them broke the rules (the researchers were secretly watching).
And, needless to say, the chocolate chip eaters had no problem following the instructions.
At this point, the students were told that the experiment is over and that they will be contacted the next day to ask them about the taste sensations.
Then, a group of seemingly unrelated researchers came to the room and asked the students if they were willing to participate in a ‘totally unrelated’ research. The new research, they were told, was trying to investigate who is better at solving puzzles, college or high school students.
Now our college students were presented with a geometric puzzle to solve. The problem was designed to be unsolvable and the experiment was testing the students’ level of perseverance and persistence before giving up trying.
The chocolate chip eaters spent 19 minutes on the puzzle making an average of 34 attempts before finally giving up.
The ‘tempted’ radish eaters spent only 8 minutes trying and made only 19 attempts before quitting!
The researchers concluded, “Self-control is an exhaustible resource”. In other words, we only have so much will power and if we drain it away in un-important minor daily struggles, we will soon run out of self-control and quit the meaningful struggles in our life. (Reference: Switch by Dan & Chip Heath)
Jonathan Haidt in his book The Happiness Hypothesis compared our automatic reactions (you can also call it our subconscious, intuition, emotional bias, or gut feelings) to an elephant that has its own will. Our analytical, logical conscious self-control is the rider on the back of the elephant. The rider seems to hold the rein and direct the elephant right and left… But, don’t be fooled, the rider can never force the elephant into a direction it does not want to go into. The elephant is the one running the show… If the rider wants to stay in control, he better tame the elephant… And the best way of doing that is actually listening to what the elephant needs.
The elephant is wired for self-protection, he only sees what is directly in front of him. He feels immediate pains, seeks immediate pleasures and is motivated by pure survival instincts (well, food and sex mainly!) … In other words, our elephant has the control button for dopamine release- our motivation neurotransmitter.
The rider, on the other hand is a visionary. He can delay gratification for a future upcoming success. Yet, he possesses limited strength. Long struggles against will power exhaust him so his hands get loose on the reins and he lets the elephant roam freely…
This is exactly what happened with the radish eaters… They exhausted their self-control (their rider) by fighting against the temptation of eating the cookies. They won this fight, yes… but they were drained. When they were later presented with another struggle, their elephant was running the show with his quick pleasure, self-preservation mentality: “What’s the point? It’s too hard! That’s boring! I can’t do it any way! What a waste of time and effort!” And, soon they gave up trying and quit the puzzle.
In our everyday life, we are the radish eaters. We exhaust our ‘rider’ by too many choices, decisions and useless struggles…
We end up stressed and drained because we wear ourselves out with 100s of little daily choices and temptations… from resisting this doughnut with our morning coffee to controlling our temper with daily traffic, to choosing the outfit that makes us look thin or sexy, to managing our cool with the new boss or new employee or teenage boy or toddler…. We face 100s of tiny choices, temptations and self-control decisions that wear us out.
Trying to just go through life with the illusion that only by will power we can achieve everything is just that: An illusion…
We keep beating ourselves up because we are lazy, we are weak or we didn’t try hard enough. Cut yourself some slack… regardless of how hard you try or how strong you are you can never pull the elephant if he does not want to come along with you.
As we are talking about Ramadan, We have always learned that Ramadan fasting is there to strengthen this self-control muscle… it is there to train us to be more in control of our desires… but unfortunately we got the mechanism all wrong… if we treat our fasting as a mere training of self-restriction and self-control… we will be further wearing off our self-control muscle… this is why we see fasting people in this holy month more irritable, stressed, angry and doing all sort of wrong stuff that fasting should actually solve not cause…
Ramadan Fasting is not a physical exercise that trains us to withstand our hunger…
Neither is it a psychological exercise that trains us to control our desires, temptations and urges
Ramadan Fasting is a spiritual practice…
Training our self-control muscle does not mean pulling harder on the rein and fighting the elephant. On the contrary, it means making peace with this elephant and motivating him to walk the path we want to go into…
And, we can only do that if we reach total inner peace in our hearts and our souls…
We can only do that if we slow down, silence the chatter, purify our hearts and LISTEN…
We reduced Ramadan to numbers and rituals (and endless supply of sugars, fats and carbs).
The rituals will be great if we actually do them holistically… meaning, both of us: the rider and the elephant… but the truth is we consciously do the rituals, read and recite, repeat the Divine remembrance, pray all night long… but our subconscious mind is not with us… Our heart and soul are not into it… We drugged the elephant so that it takes a nap until we finish the holy month; than we will hop back on the hamster wheel… resume the journey fighting with our elephant for the direction we want to take.
We dissociated our hearts from the whole process… because our hearts are already very heavy, exhausted and weary. So, we figured: “know what, let’s take this month off, forget all baggage and trouble and just pray, read and recite Qur’an … (and might as well eat)…
But this defeats the purpose…
The researchers had just finished baking a fresh batch of chocolate chip cookies that made the room smell un-resistibly amazing. All students were presented with 2 bowls one containing the freshly baked cookies and the other had some radishes. The researchers left the room after giving clear instructions: Half of the students were asked to eat 2-3 radishes and do not touch the cookies and the other half (the lucky ones!) were asked to eat 2-3 cookies but no radishes.
The radish eaters had hard time exercising their will power. Yet none of them broke the rules (the researchers were secretly watching).
And, needless to say, the chocolate chip eaters had no problem following the instructions.
At this point, the students were told that the experiment is over and that they will be contacted the next day to ask them about the taste sensations.
Then, a group of seemingly unrelated researchers came to the room and asked the students if they were willing to participate in a ‘totally unrelated’ research. The new research, they were told, was trying to investigate who is better at solving puzzles, college or high school students.
Now our college students were presented with a geometric puzzle to solve. The problem was designed to be unsolvable and the experiment was testing the students’ level of perseverance and persistence before giving up trying.
The chocolate chip eaters spent 19 minutes on the puzzle making an average of 34 attempts before finally giving up.
The ‘tempted’ radish eaters spent only 8 minutes trying and made only 19 attempts before quitting!
The researchers concluded, “Self-control is an exhaustible resource”. In other words, we only have so much will power and if we drain it away in un-important minor daily struggles, we will soon run out of self-control and quit the meaningful struggles in our life. (Reference: Switch by Dan & Chip Heath)
Jonathan Haidt in his book The Happiness Hypothesis compared our automatic reactions (you can also call it our subconscious, intuition, emotional bias, or gut feelings) to an elephant that has its own will. Our analytical, logical conscious self-control is the rider on the back of the elephant. The rider seems to hold the rein and direct the elephant right and left… But, don’t be fooled, the rider can never force the elephant into a direction it does not want to go into. The elephant is the one running the show… If the rider wants to stay in control, he better tame the elephant… And the best way of doing that is actually listening to what the elephant needs.
The elephant is wired for self-protection, he only sees what is directly in front of him. He feels immediate pains, seeks immediate pleasures and is motivated by pure survival instincts (well, food and sex mainly!) … In other words, our elephant has the control button for dopamine release- our motivation neurotransmitter.
The rider, on the other hand is a visionary. He can delay gratification for a future upcoming success. Yet, he possesses limited strength. Long struggles against will power exhaust him so his hands get loose on the reins and he lets the elephant roam freely…
This is exactly what happened with the radish eaters… They exhausted their self-control (their rider) by fighting against the temptation of eating the cookies. They won this fight, yes… but they were drained. When they were later presented with another struggle, their elephant was running the show with his quick pleasure, self-preservation mentality: “What’s the point? It’s too hard! That’s boring! I can’t do it any way! What a waste of time and effort!” And, soon they gave up trying and quit the puzzle.
In our everyday life, we are the radish eaters. We exhaust our ‘rider’ by too many choices, decisions and useless struggles…
We end up stressed and drained because we wear ourselves out with 100s of little daily choices and temptations… from resisting this doughnut with our morning coffee to controlling our temper with daily traffic, to choosing the outfit that makes us look thin or sexy, to managing our cool with the new boss or new employee or teenage boy or toddler…. We face 100s of tiny choices, temptations and self-control decisions that wear us out.
Trying to just go through life with the illusion that only by will power we can achieve everything is just that: An illusion…
We keep beating ourselves up because we are lazy, we are weak or we didn’t try hard enough. Cut yourself some slack… regardless of how hard you try or how strong you are you can never pull the elephant if he does not want to come along with you.
As we are talking about Ramadan, We have always learned that Ramadan fasting is there to strengthen this self-control muscle… it is there to train us to be more in control of our desires… but unfortunately we got the mechanism all wrong… if we treat our fasting as a mere training of self-restriction and self-control… we will be further wearing off our self-control muscle… this is why we see fasting people in this holy month more irritable, stressed, angry and doing all sort of wrong stuff that fasting should actually solve not cause…
Ramadan Fasting is not a physical exercise that trains us to withstand our hunger…
Neither is it a psychological exercise that trains us to control our desires, temptations and urges
Ramadan Fasting is a spiritual practice…
Training our self-control muscle does not mean pulling harder on the rein and fighting the elephant. On the contrary, it means making peace with this elephant and motivating him to walk the path we want to go into…
And, we can only do that if we reach total inner peace in our hearts and our souls…
We can only do that if we slow down, silence the chatter, purify our hearts and LISTEN…
We reduced Ramadan to numbers and rituals (and endless supply of sugars, fats and carbs).
The rituals will be great if we actually do them holistically… meaning, both of us: the rider and the elephant… but the truth is we consciously do the rituals, read and recite, repeat the Divine remembrance, pray all night long… but our subconscious mind is not with us… Our heart and soul are not into it… We drugged the elephant so that it takes a nap until we finish the holy month; than we will hop back on the hamster wheel… resume the journey fighting with our elephant for the direction we want to take.
We dissociated our hearts from the whole process… because our hearts are already very heavy, exhausted and weary. So, we figured: “know what, let’s take this month off, forget all baggage and trouble and just pray, read and recite Qur’an … (and might as well eat)…
But this defeats the purpose…
How can we tame the elephant?
The Elephant is our subconscious mind… this is basically our storage system… it stores our emotions, feelings, beliefs, experiences and these what dictate our choices and actions in everyday life.
I once asked in a survey: What do you think is the number one determinant of health and happiness? people chose things like healthy eating, positive thinking, stress management, social support… but few chose the one thing I see in my 20 years of experience that makes all the difference: Life meaning!
Having a life meaning and purpose is the main determinant of health and happiness… and there is no right or wrong answer to that, your life meaning can be as big or as small as you want as long as it makes sense to you and adds ‘meaning’ to your life and as long as it connects you to the Big Picture, to our Ultimate purpose in life: Serving God.
To reach this meaning and to tame this elephant we need to reach deep within, to silence the chatter… to Just sit and listen… we are not able to sit and listen any more… we do not know the sound of silence… Reflection is one of the huge forgotten spiritual ritual… so as meditation… just sitting in silence…
When I go to the mosque in Ramadan I get stressed by so many ladies asking: “how many time did you do a khatma (whole reading of the Quran)? Only one? I am working on my 3rd, you’re wasting time, sister… hurry up! This is the holy month… Don’t waste it!”
“How many Divine remembrance did you do today…. No no no... not enough, sister… you need to do more, come and join us- you have to hurry up?”
Actually… NO, you don’t! You don’t need to hurry up… you need to slow down… to reflect on every word you are reading, to live it, to feel it, to apply it …
This is the only way for you to reach the elephant… the only way to tame it… The only way for you to harness its unstoppable power… The elephant, as I mentioned, is wired for self-survival and self-protection. We need to shift the meaning of survival from just food and sex to life meaning and purpose to a valuable mission and this what will drive our elephant… When it has a clear life meaning, life purpose and mission, it automatically sets in motion and once in motion, it snow-bowls into action.
Slow down… relax… take a deep breath… roll back your shoulders… and LISTEN! Deep inside, your heart knows its path… it knows its mission, it knows its direction and its ultimate purpose… You just need to LISTEN… The silence you cultivate will strengthen your connection with your purpose, will refine your intention and add to your sincerity…
I once asked in a survey: What do you think is the number one determinant of health and happiness? people chose things like healthy eating, positive thinking, stress management, social support… but few chose the one thing I see in my 20 years of experience that makes all the difference: Life meaning!
Having a life meaning and purpose is the main determinant of health and happiness… and there is no right or wrong answer to that, your life meaning can be as big or as small as you want as long as it makes sense to you and adds ‘meaning’ to your life and as long as it connects you to the Big Picture, to our Ultimate purpose in life: Serving God.
To reach this meaning and to tame this elephant we need to reach deep within, to silence the chatter… to Just sit and listen… we are not able to sit and listen any more… we do not know the sound of silence… Reflection is one of the huge forgotten spiritual ritual… so as meditation… just sitting in silence…
When I go to the mosque in Ramadan I get stressed by so many ladies asking: “how many time did you do a khatma (whole reading of the Quran)? Only one? I am working on my 3rd, you’re wasting time, sister… hurry up! This is the holy month… Don’t waste it!”
“How many Divine remembrance did you do today…. No no no... not enough, sister… you need to do more, come and join us- you have to hurry up?”
Actually… NO, you don’t! You don’t need to hurry up… you need to slow down… to reflect on every word you are reading, to live it, to feel it, to apply it …
This is the only way for you to reach the elephant… the only way to tame it… The only way for you to harness its unstoppable power… The elephant, as I mentioned, is wired for self-survival and self-protection. We need to shift the meaning of survival from just food and sex to life meaning and purpose to a valuable mission and this what will drive our elephant… When it has a clear life meaning, life purpose and mission, it automatically sets in motion and once in motion, it snow-bowls into action.
Slow down… relax… take a deep breath… roll back your shoulders… and LISTEN! Deep inside, your heart knows its path… it knows its mission, it knows its direction and its ultimate purpose… You just need to LISTEN… The silence you cultivate will strengthen your connection with your purpose, will refine your intention and add to your sincerity…
RSS Feed
