Mindfulness

How do we know that what we think is what we really think, and not just what someone else wants us to think? Let that thought percolate for a minute.    

It turns out that it doesn’t take much to make us think something we didn’t previously. Our minds are biased to work against us. It’s often referred to as “confirmation bias.” 

It almost seems like a magic trick, but it’s really our brains searching for a way to end uncertainty. There are so many things we don’t know. Sometimes the knowledge just isn’t available yet. But many times, we’re looking for a shortcut. 

If we can find some evidence that supports our theory, we can stop thinking about it. For instance, there are plenty of people trying to sell investors on “guaranteed” stock-picking strategies. They sound great in theory. To make them look even more attractive, the inventors of these strategies present evidence that makes them look like can’t-lose propositions. 

Oddly enough, the evidence is usually cherry-picked. We rationalize their story, telling ourselves we can ignore the supposed outliers and that it really does work — most of the time. As a result, we latch on to the good stuff and run with it. We barely stop to think before signing up to learn more about their amazing stock-picking strategy, all for three easy payments of $39.99. After all, it’s guaranteed. 

It happens in smaller ways, too. We tell ourselves we can’t possibly save money every month. To back up this theory, we look only at the total left in the checkbook on the last day of the month. Clearly, we can’t save more. But in the process, we skip over all the line entries for unplanned purchases of things that easily fall into the “want” category. Of course, it doesn’t matter. We’ve already “confirmed” our theory. We have no more money to save. 

Ultimately, confirmation bias is about telling ourselves a really good story. I don’t blame people at all for preferring the story they’ve managed to tell themselves. But if we’re at all serious about making smarter decisions, we need to practice storytelling less and playing devil’s advocate more. 

Because, as the old saying goes, the truth will set us free. Of course, we may very well discover our theory is correct, but it’s just as likely that we’ll discover our theory has some holes in it.

Confirmation bias is super hard to deal with, and it is critical that we are at least aware of our own tendency to fall prey to it.

In 2015, Dan Price, the CEO of Gravity Payments, made an announcement that shocked just about everyone. He set a new, minimum salary of $70,000 for his employees. Sounds fantastic, right? It turns out that not everyone loved the idea.

The New York Times recently published a piece that reviews some of the fallout afterwards, including a handful of customers leaving the business:

Two of Mr. Price’s most valued employees quit, spurred in part by their view that it was unfair to double the pay of some new hires while the longest-serving staff members got small or no raises. Some friends and associates in Seattle’s close-knit entrepreneurial network were also piqued that Mr. Price’s action made them look stingy in front of their own employees.

Within weeks of the announcement, the company co-founder (also the CEO’s brother) filed a lawsuit. Clearly, there’s a lot happening with this change, and we’re only three months into this experiment. But I keep coming back to Dan Price’s catalyst for making this change.

After reading a study about happiness, Price decided to test one of the findings. Emotional well-being improves as income goes up, but appears to max out at around $75,000. By setting a minimum salary of $70,000, Price believes he can make a difference in the lives of his employees. And he probably can, but it got me thinking about how we define what qualifies as “enough.”

What would change in your life if your boss suddenly announced you’d make a minimum of $70,000/year? Would that be enough, or would you still worry about money?

Maybe you already make more than $70,000. If you’re already there and it’s not enough, at what income would you have enough?

This question of what qualifies as enough keeps nagging at me as I wonder if we’re asking the right questions about how much money we need to be happy.

Yes, we need to pay our rent or our mortgage. Yes, we need to pay our power bill and put food on the table. There are many things we need to pay for that make life easier and/or better. But once those needs are met, then what?

Over the next week, take some time to figure out your baseline. What qualifies as “enough” to live your life comfortably?

Just so we’re clear, this baseline will be different for everyone. What feels good to you may be completely different from your neighbor. Also, I’m not looking for people to abandon their homes or leave behind the things they really enjoy. But I am challenging you to get specific.

Does everything you buy add something to your life? Or does it just make you worry about the money you spent?

I’d love to know what you find out. Shoot me an email at hello@behaviorgap.com if you feel like sharing.

What if we don’t really need what we think we need? This question came to mind as I read about Professor Jeff Wilson and The Dumpster Project. A dean at Huston-Tillotson University in Austin, Texas, Wilson embarked on an experiment to see if it was possible to live in a 36-square-foot dumpster.

Over time, he’s gone from sleeping on cardboard mats to adding custom touches like a sliding roof and an air conditioner. He sums up his sustainability experiment this way:

“The big hypothesis we’re trying to test here is, can you have a pretty darn good life on much, much less?” He paused. “This is obviously an outlier experiment. But so far, I have, I’d say. A better life than I had before.”

I’ve shared before the idea of living a more minimalist life, but some of those stories have focused on the concept of a number. What’s the smallest number of items I can own? Professor Wilson’s story made me refocus on the idea of what items do we really need?

What makes this perspective so interesting is that the answer varies by individual. It’s incredibly personal and, I believe, an incredibly powerful process.

The goal isn’t to get down to a number, but to better understand why we have what we have in our lives. In many ways, it goes back to the idea of buying good, quality items and owning them for a long time. If you aren’t buying everything you see in the store, it becomes much more realistic to buy durable items that we really value and would otherwise be “too expensive.”

A friend of mine recently moved into a new home. It’s a larger place than she was in before, and because she’s not married and doesn’t have kids, people keep asking, “What do you need all that space for?” It turns out that for her, it was about location. Homes rarely come up for sale in the area she wanted to live.

As a result, she jumped at the chance to buy the home, despite the greater square footage. It means more time spent cleaning, but now, she literally steps out the door and she’s in nature. She’s exactly where she wants to be.

However, because she knows it’s a real risk that she’ll fill up the house if she’s not careful, she’s adopted a one in, one out rule. For everything new she wants to bring into the house, something old needs to go out. Some of you probably follow this rule too, and like Professor Wilson’s experiment, it goes back to this idea of thoughtful consumption.

What do we really need? Are we buying things thoughtfully or carelessly? I believe our willingness to look at our buying behavior can have a huge impact on whether we reach the goals that we say matter most to us. If we get busy filling up our lives with things we don’t need, it’s easy to get distracted. So this weekend, I have a challenge for you.

Take a look at your possessions and identify three things you consider necessities in your life. Then, take a look around at the rest of your stuff. If you had to give up everything else you own to keep those three items, could you? Or does something else start to look more important?

By the end of this experiment, you’ll have a much better idea of how to answer the question, “What do I really need?”

Let’s start with a story from Jon Muth’s book “Zen Shorts:”

Two traveling monks reached a town where there was a young woman waiting to step out of her sedan chair. The rains had made deep puddles and she couldn’t step across without spoiling her silken robes. She stood there, looking very cross and impatient. She was scolding her attendants. They had nowhere to place the packages they held for her, so they couldn’t help her across the puddle.

The younger monk noticed the woman, said nothing, and walked by. The older monk quickly picked her up and put her on his back, transported her across the water, and put her down on the other side. She didn’t thank the older monk; she just shoved him out of the way and departed.

As they continued on their way, the young monk was brooding and preoccupied. After several hours, unable to hold his silence, he spoke out. “That woman back there was very selfish and rude, but you picked her up on your back and carried her! Then, she didn’t even thank you!”

“I set the woman down hours ago,” the older monk replied. “Why are you still carrying her?”

There is an actual cost to holding onto things we should let go of. It can come in the form of anger, frustration, resentment, or something even worse. The question is, can you really afford to keep paying the bill?

The faster we learn to drop our emotional dead weight, the more room we create for something better. I’m talking about everything from stewing about the guy who cut you off in traffic this morning to still refusing to forgive an old friend for an event 20 years ago.

We have only so much bandwidth. We have only so much time. We only have so much energy. Do we really want to invest any of our precious resources — financial or otherwise — into something that will return nothing but misery?

My question for you is, “What’s one thing you can set down this week?”

Go ahead and pick something. A fight with your spouse, something a politician said, your team losing the big game. Pick it, drop it, and then pause. For just a moment, simply pause and savor what it feels like to no longer carry that burden and pay that price.

Then, I want you to invest that “extra” into something more productive. If it’s extra time, go for a walk. If it’s extra peace, take five deep breaths. If it’s extra money, because you decided to just pay the stupid traffic ticket instead of letting it sit on your desk accruing late fees, then take that extra money and invest it in something that makes you happy.

Play with your kids. Take a nap. Just do something that makes you feel the opposite of how you felt before you let go. I can guarantee you, this is one investment you’ll never regret.

And then, after you’re done with all that, send me an email. If you’re willing to share, I’d love to know what you decided to let go. Email me at hello@behaviorgap.com. Last week’s emails were amazing, and I’m looking forward to reading more.

This column, titled The Cost of Holding On, originally appeared in The New York Times on April 25, 2016.

I was in the airport when I found out that the mother of one of my best friends had just died quite suddenly. She was at dinner with a friend, felt sick, and was dead within a few hours.

I learned this through a message from my mom, who heard about it on the local news.

I called my friend. Imagine this scene for a second: There I am in Terminal 2 of the San Diego airport, calling someone whose mother had just died.

He answered. He was crushed. We cried.

His mom was one of the few people who always saw past my stupid behavior in high school. She always loved and accepted me, despite my being quite unlovable at the time. She gently influenced me to be better by not trying to influence me at all.

She was amazing.

My friend knew that better than anyone. He told me about her last moments in the hospital. He told me about begging the doctor to do more.

Life. Is. Heavy. And then I boarded a plane.

I thought about everyone else on the plane. I wondered if the airline employee scanning my boarding pass could see that I had been crying. Were my eyes red? Swollen? I wondered if there would be room for my bag in the overhead bin. If the person next to me would be nice.

In that moment, I couldn’t help but think about how odd the situation felt. All around me were strangers. I knew no one. And as far as I knew, no one had any idea what I was dealing with.

I thought about the airline employee who had just checked my boarding pass, the man sitting next to me, the woman across the aisle. Did they have a sick child or a friend in the hospital? Were they on that plane in a race against time? What about the person who had been yelling at the gate agent or, for that matter, those who were yelling on Twitter while I checked it standing in line?

As I turned away and stared at the Pacific Ocean through the little window from my seat on the plane, I was left with a bunch of grief and two big questions.

What burdens are all the people on this plane carrying? And how would I treat them differently if I knew?

This column, titled Ask Yourself This: What Burdens Is That Other Person Carrying?, originally appeared in The New York Times on July 2, 2018.