Our emotional responses or the degree to which we might inhibit those responses, are essentially responsible for the way we experience living. Contrary to popular psychological and new age views, it is not our thoughts that control the circumstances of our lives, but our feelings and impressions. Changing our thinking will always follow changing the way we feel. The Diana Effect (January 1998) Opportunities for the en masse expression of emotion have been frequent this last year. Surprisingly, it may be that because of these outpourings the world is a better place. Put on a Happy Face (May 1997) It is generally perceived in society that we have little power over our own state of being. The reality however suggests otherwise. Becoming happy, for example, may be as simple as a smile. Balancing Act (May 1997) Who has the advantage in a contest between machine and man and which way does the presence of emotions tip the balance? The Diana Effect (January 1998) Opportunities for the en masse expression of emotion have been frequent this last year. Surprisingly, it may be that because of these outpourings the world is a better place. Only one event could have been responsible for the steep decline in psychiatric admissions in Britain during the month of August 1997. The kind of event that one would imagine would lead to a rise in desperation. The death of Princess Diana, saw British psychiatric clinics reporting a decline in the numbers of patients being treated for depression and stress by as much as 50%. The explanation, they concluded; "There's significant benefit from a good old cry and the death of Diana gave people the license to do just that". Not only did the event lower levels of depression, but during the week of the death and the funeral, crime rates were also reputed to have taken a dive. Such was the magnitude of its influence on world events that the mood of the British nation and the world at large due to the Princess's death and the resultant consequences of it became informally known to many as 'the Diana Effect'. Contrary to what might have been expected, the departure of this much-loved world figure did not result in greater hopelessness, but in many ways restored hope to those who had lost it. People were reminded of their own inspiration, their desires to live more open and meaningful lives, their desires to more willingly exercise compassion and kindness toward their fellow men and women. Calls for a more demonstrative Royal family echoed the yearning of the public to embrace the open expression of emotion and to manifest it more in their own daily lives. TIME Magazine referred to 1997 as "The Year Emotions Ruled" and cited other events, perhaps not quite of the same magnitude as Diana but those events that stimulated the emotions of the public all the same; The Heaven's Gate suicides, the murder of Ennis Cosby, the fallout from the OJ Simpson case, Mother Teresa's passing and the birth of the world's first septuplets. Columnist Roger Rosenblatt in his summing up, supposed that "In any case, there seemed to be a strong current of American melancholy seeking to express itself." Of course, the feelings he refers to were worldwide but in a telling statement he concludes; "It may be that the death of Diana came simply as one loss and absence too many. Whatever else Diana was in the world, she effected a lovely presence, and who could not weep for the loss of that? Gone, Diana seemed to emblemize the word; she was everything gone. One grief stood for us all. As in any epiphany, many people probably did not even know why they were weeping." The degree to which this expression occurred is indeed quite extraordinary; even those who claimed to have been uninterested in the life of Diana were profoundly affected by her death and grieved or wept at her passing. It would seem that the power of the event to provoke a significant outpouring of emotion and for this release to impact on the general state of wellbeing of people everywhere, is testimony to the power of emotion. But perhaps more importantly, it is testimony to the power of emotion when it is expressed and experienced. As is the case with depression, the nature of emotion is often misinterpreted and thus its effects on the individual are also misinterpreted. It is common for example, to imagine that depression is a deep form of sadness or that it is the manifestation of hopelessness. Neither is in fact the reality. As the statistics showed, Britons who experienced their loss at the death of Princess Diana were not prone to develop depression. In fact it would seem that the expression of their loss served to fend off depression and stress, what is more, in staggering numbers. Depression aptly describes a distinct shutdown of the emotions, a severe state of being divorced from one's feelings. Depressed people when asked to describe how they feel will often tell you that they don't feel anything at all. Emptiness is another term used by the depressed to characterize their state of being. A recent Australian survey of elderly people suffering from depression indicated that those who lifted weights had less disturbed sleep, fewer aches and pains and suffered less from depression and enjoyed better quality of life than those in a control group who did not do the weight lifting. Twenty weeks of weight lifting saw 80% of the exercise group no longer clinically depressed, compared with 38% of the control group who received the same treatment in every other respect. The geriatric specialist reporting on the study, Dr Nalin Singh, claimed that weight lifting had similar results to anti-depressant drugs, without the adverse side effects of confusion and sleep problems. Other studies have also shown that physical exercise can improve the quality of life of older people. It would be easy to make the assumption that those who lifted weights were able to raise their self esteem and feel better about themselves and their bodies and consequently, their depression left them; perhaps due to a greater sense of purpose or having something to occupy them. Certainly those things could be factors, but what was it about the weight lifting that enabled them to make the change for greater self-esteem? In order for their self-esteem to increase the folk in the study would have to be open to making such a change. Encouraging anyone diagnosed as clinically depressed is not an easy task. The exercise had to have produced some kind of freeing effect, significant enough for the participants to make the personal changes. It has long been acknowledged that physical exercise can break down emotional barriers; some personal development courses use exhaustive physical exercise to induce emotional openness. The military has also used such practices to separate the strong from the weak. Such examples indicate the correlation between physical and mental wellbeing and the role of the experience and expression of human emotion. They demonstrate that those who express their emotion, even what is sometimes described as negative emotion such as feelings of sadness and grief, will enjoy better mental and physical health than those who do not and will consequently, become stronger and more able. People who are shut down to the natural expression of emotion are more likely to develop illness, depression and poor self-esteem. Research into emotional intelligence is finding that the degree to which we are open to our emotions has direct influence over our ability to make choices in life, how capable we are of responding to what happens to us in daily life and how effectively we can learn. This strongly contradicts previous myths of the emotionless intellectual, vastly superior in learning ability due to the absence of the interference of the emotions. The less easily we experience our emotions, whatever the nature of them might be, the more difficult our journey through life becomes. It's interesting to note too, the lowered crime rates during the coverage of Diana's death. People committed fewer crimes while experiencing their loss than at other times. Again it might have been assumed that the experience of emotions such as those that arise from despair would be more likely to induce acts of crime. This was not however, the case. Similarly, those who do commit acts of violence and other acts of a criminal nature do not do so as the result of the experience of emotion. Anger is commonly cited as motivating all sorts of anti-social and damaging behavior, yet anger, when properly expressed cannot lead to such actions. Only by shutting down one's experience of emotion are such acts possible. In fact, the unbalanced activity of the intellect is more closely associated with negative consequences than anything motivated by emotion. The distortion of proper emotion and the intellectual interference in the expression of it produces the kinds of aberrations responsible for acts of revenge and those like it. The fields of study currently looking into the effects of emotion have a long way to go in understanding the true nature of emotion as far as what constitutes the genuine emotions and indeed how these differ from the mental creations commonly confused with real emotion. Until a deeper understanding of emotion and its necessary function in the life of the individual is widely embraced, the perception of emotion will continue to bear the burden of society's misunderstanding. Changing society's perception of emotion can only begin on a personal level as we all demonstrate our own willingness to give voice to our emotions and to give them proper expression. One cannot learn about emotion, as with anything, by divorcing oneself from it, seeking only to study it in others. The only true way to study the role and the nature of emotion is to study it in oneself. While entirely unscientific, it is the only true way to gather genuine knowledge of the self and thus knowledge on a wider scale, of our fellow men and women. Wayfarer International, Copyright © John & Melody Anderson, 1997 - 1999. All rights reserved. Put on a Happy Face (May 1997) It is generally perceived in society that we have little power over our own state of being. The reality however suggests otherwise. Becoming happy, for example, may be as simple as a smile. Novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, imprisoned for eight years in a Soviet labor camp stated “It is not the level of prosperity that makes for happiness but the kinship of heart to heart and the way we look at the world… A man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy, and no one can stop him.” It is commonly regarded that happiness is a lucky occurrence, the effect of the events of our lives rather than the product of our own choosing. Indeed people who show consistent signs of happiness are often described as lucky by the people who know them. Many become decidedly uncomfortable in the presence of an overtly happy person. Some will even hotly dispute the merits of what seems to be a universal desire within people everywhere to be motivated in life by the desire for happiness. But just how much is happiness the product of our own choosing and how much is luck or accident? Researchers have long been attempting to identify the real nature of emotions and the role they play in human health. Experiments have shown that subjects who were asked to hold a pen between their teeth (in a manner similar to that of smiling) consistently rated cartoons funnier than when they held the pen with pursed lips. In the course of our own research when we asked subjects to frown, despite feeling happy at the beginning of the exercise, every individual without fail reported feeling ‘bad’ after a sustained period of frowning. James Laird (1974) in similar experiments found that an induced smile was more likely to make subjects feel happy and induced frowning was more likely to evoke sadness or anger. These findings suggest a strong correlation between our physical expressions and our emotional state. Smiling predisposes us to feeling happier; feeling happy predisposes us to smiling. Frowning predisposes us toward feelings of negativity and vice versa. It is a mistake to imagine only that our feelings cause the responses in our bodies when what we do with our bodies can also cause us to feel a certain way. So, if we can induce, or at least create a strong tendency towards, a state of being through consciously adopting certain facial expressions, then what we ‘do’ with our faces in daily life should be of significant interest to us. While it would be unrealistic to imagine that simply changing our physical expressions could entirely cure the ills of a challenging situation, perhaps the ceasing of expressions which aggravate negative feelings could greatly enhance our ability to approach difficult situations with more relaxation and thus, reduce the degree to which we attach stress to challenges. Expressions of happiness are natural and obviously present no dilemma; it is these expressions of stress that imply the requirement for change. Much of what we do in life is made easier or more difficult through the associations we create and attach to our actions and our perceptions. If we imagine something will be difficult then it is more likely to be so. If we create the expectation of difficulty and if we reiterate that throughout the activity, then we attach a significant association of negativity with that action. If we also adopt a certain physical manner in doing that thing, the association is stronger still. It is well known that association can help us learn. For example, if we learn a new fact while listening to a particular piece of music, retrieving that fact becomes easier when we hear the same music. The now famous experiments of Ivan Pavlov the Russian physiologist who was able to induce salivation responses in dogs he tested by training them to make associations between the sound of a buzzer and the prospect of receiving food, demonstrate the power of association. If we frown when we are feeling down or when we are angry or sad and if we do it often enough, then the association between the action and the feeling are made stronger. The same applies to the links between feelings of happiness and the relaxation of the body. Association is one of the fundamental components of learning. The individual who accepts the truth of personal responsibility also accepts that the condition of the body and the mind is also within his or her control. The creation of stress in the body is a product of choice. When we first start out in life, we are naturally able to maintain the relaxation of our bodies. As we grow, we learn how to create different and varied physical states of being through the power of our own choosing. But bodily stress is by no means the only factor influencing our state of being in daily life. Other aspects of choice have powerful impact. We once observed a child of about three at a park being pushed on a swing by a parent. The child was lost in her own little world aided by the rhythmical back forth motion of the swinging. The little girl, who had been perfectly happy, then began to adopt a change in expression. Her lip protruded and dropped, a deep furrow appeared on her forehead and she hunched her upper body and began to utter the word ‘no’ in a soft and pathetic voice. She did this over and over, while continuing to swing enthusiastically in what appeared to be the systematic and conscious practicing of how to create the appearance of unhappiness. It was obvious that she was not communicating a desire to stop swinging and that the condition was not a real demonstration of how she was feeling, for a question from the parent revealed an instant smile and the assurance that she was fine. Moments later the child returned to her practice. This was a stunning example of the kinds of processes children go through in their efforts to learn about life and to become proficient human beings, much of it occurring as the result of inspiration. Children will often take great interest in other children or adults expressing a negative emotion while paying almost no attention to a happy individual. Happiness comes naturally to children; negative expressions seem more interesting. Sometimes this interest can inspire the child to feel a desire to learn how to express these other states of being. To them it’s part of a culture they very much want to be a part of. Joining this culture also means joining in the behaviors that are reflected by that culture; to the child these are necessary skills to learn how to develop. However, our limited intellectual perception of implication is such that we lack the ability to recognize the relative wisdom of making such inspired choices and this in part explains why we might choose to adopt something that in adulthood seems to us to be a foolish choice. A child we know, when she was only a few years old but able to converse quite well, noticed the black amalgam fillings in tooth cavities of some adults and proclaimed that she too wanted to have them. We endeavored to explain to her why this was not something to be desirous of, referring to drilling and visits to dentists etc and explaining the merits of dental health. The explanations made no difference. She had no knowledge of the unpleasantness of having teeth drilled or any of the implications of this kind of situation. She made the observation that her mother also had these fillings and that she wanted to have them too when she grew up. Once again we explained that she could choose not to have them. Finally she stated, but more forcefully this time, ‘then I’ll choose them.” From a child as young as this the determination she showed was striking. The dental history of this child is yet to reveal itself, however, while it might seem likely that as she grows she will make more positive choices it is not necessarily the case. No doubt she has no recollection of the decisions or the force of her inspiration at that time, but it is this kind of inspiration that can influence and dominate the way our life unfolds for us. By the time we reach adulthood our ability to control and manipulate our state of being is well practiced and has become second nature to us, it has passed from the realms of conscious control into the hidden realms of subtlety and habit. The choices we make in our daily lives reflect a powerful knowledge of our own freedom, a knowledge that is not only consciously intact when we are young, but a knowledge we freely make use of in our efforts to test our own power to choose. The fact that we hide this knowledge of our own power from ourselves is no proof that it does not exist. Just as no one would dispute that the air we breathe does not exist because we cannot see it. Our ability to be happy in life, as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn suggested, is dependent on the exercise of choice. And as he also correctly stated, once the commitment toward that choice is made, nothing can stand in the way of the force of its power. Wayfarer International, Copyright © John & Melody Anderson, 1997 - 1999. All rights reserved. Balancing Act (May 1997) Who has the advantage in a contest between machine and man and which way does the presence of emotions tip the balance? Chess grandmaster Yasser Seirawan of the United States said of the match between super computer Deep Blue and the Russian chess master Garry Kasparov; “The computer has an advantage, it does not have this body of emotions. We humans get depressed.” Ironically Deep Blue’s programmers have been attempting to modify the computer to play more like a human and increase its ability to play chess more intuitively. Just what do they mean by trying to make the computer more human and more intuitive? A significant difference between the computer and the human individual is that people can feel emotions and computers can’t. Perhaps Deep Blue’s programmers know something that Seirawan and others like him who have made similar comments do not. In their endeavors to make Deep Blue more human in its ability to decide chess moves they imply the importance of emotion in the process of decision making. The chess master expresses an opinion typical of many who have no understanding of the real nature of genuine emotion; that emotion makes us less rational and interferes with our ability to make clear decisions. In his book Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman gives the interesting example of a man called Elliot who had a tumor removed from behind his forehead. Although described as successful, the surgery also severed ties between the lower centers of the emotional brain and the thinking abilities of the neocortex. Goleman reports that Elliot’s thinking became ‘computerlike’, neutral to extreme proportions, he was overly dispassionate and virtually oblivious to his own feelings. Previous to the operation he had been a successful corporate lawyer and although tests could find nothing wrong with his mental ability, friends noticed distinct differences in his character. Elliot was fired from a succession of legal jobs, his wife left him, he wasted his savings on fruitless investments and ended up living in a spare room at a relative’s house. His main problem was that he had become incapable of making decisions, struggling with the most trivial of decisions, such as choosing his next appointment time with his neurologist. Elliot lacked the ability to feel preference and to assign value to differing options. Insufficient awareness of his emotions caused his reasoning to become faulty. As a result he was unable to learn from his mistakes and to base new decisions on past experiences. His life had become a muddle of indecisiveness. It is interesting that although Elliot’s powers of logic, his memory, attention and other cognitive abilities were intact, none of these intellectual abilities helped him to make intelligent decisions about his life. His intelligence had been reduced to an extreme minimum, primarily because his emotional centers had been damaged. Coming back to the chess example, imagine then if Elliot had not been a corporate lawyer but a Grandmaster of Chess. In the eyes of Yasser Seirawan, following his operation Elliot would have been ideally positioned to play the perfect game of chess. Yet given the example of his life in the wake of the surgery, it is most unlikely that he would have continued to be a great chess player. The super computer has been programmed to determine its moves by considering 200 million potential moves per second and choosing one. In the three minutes allotted to each player for a single move, by the time the computer has executed its choice, it has chosen from a total of 50 billion options. Although Kasparaov is a great player he lacks the capability (and the time) to consider even a tiny fraction of this number of possible moves before deciding on which one he will make. But then he doesn’t have to. Kasparov makes his choices based upon a limited knowledge of all the options yet despite this, he has beaten the computer once already and in a previous match, four times; although at that time the computer could only process half the number options it is capable of today. What is it that makes him a great player capable of beating one of the most powerful computers in the world? - Intuition. Garry Kasparov must rely on his feelings of preference to determine which move to make. Ultimately it comes down to a matter of which move feels right. Even though the computer has an intellectual advantage it will never possess the ability to follow the voice of intuition. So if Kasparov is really the one with the advantage, why doesn’t he win every time? Our friend Yasser Seirawan would probably say ‘because his emotions interfere with his ability to reason’. In fact what is interfering with his ability to make the right move is not emotion, but a distortion of it. In the final game, with the match tied at 2 ½ all, the computer went on to take the game in only 19 moves in just over an hour, stunning spectators and chess experts, many believing that Kasparov had been ‘psyched out’ by Deep Blue. Emotion is commonly misunderstood as being the product of our thoughts. The difference between the perception of an emotion and the experience of an emotion is often at the root of the misunderstanding. The term emotion is wrongly applied to a whole range of mental processes that have the appearance of emotion without the genuine responses typical of real emotion. So when depression is described as an emotion, how accurate is such a statement? Depression is often regarded as an emotion yet ironically a common characteristic noticeable in sufferers of depression is the absence of feeling and the presence of varying degrees of emptiness. Resentment is frequently regarded as anger, sentimentality as love, pleasure as happiness and self-pity as grief. In all of these cases, the false emotions are the creation of thinking and not the product of real emotional responsiveness. Was Kasparov ‘psyched out’ because of the interference of his emotions or his thinking? Whatever was done, one things is for sure, it was done by Kasparov and not Deep Blue. If we look at the process of decision-making with the objective of identifying the factors that interfere with such actions it is more likely to be the excessive product of thinking than the expression of emotion which brings complication to the things we do. The nature of genuine emotion is such that it is fleeting and for the individual who is open to his or her feelings, emotions come and go. The presence of emotion no more indicates complication in the life of the individual than the absence of it suggests that things are going well. The very fact that we have the capacity to feel emotion suggests its importance to human wellbeing. A balanced relationship with our emotions is the cornerstone of a balanced life. If we seek to rid ourselves of the ‘interference’ of our emotions, we seek to rid ourselves of one of the fundamental components of our existence and one upon which our very ability to survive and to prosper depends. Wayfarer International, Copyright © John & Melody Anderson, 1997 - 2002. All rights reserved.