Fooled in Life: Why&How We Decided to Deplete Ourselves Using Self-Control

Read on my website/ Reading time: 5 min.

We once thought we better had to control our lives instead of going with the flow.

Not long ago, almost a year before the pandemic, Harvard Business Review published an article titled “To Control Your Life, Control What You Pay Attention To.”

The article assured the following:

“Your attention determines the experiences you have and the experiences you have determine the life you live. Rather than allowing distractions to derail you, choose where you direct your attention at any given moment, based on an understanding of your priorities and goals. To do this, you need to control external factors like technology (turn off that phone!) and the environment (keep those interrupting colleagues away!). But you also need to learn to control internal factors, like your own behavior and thoughts. Learning to practice attention management won’t eliminate all distractions from your day, but it will give you more control over how you spend your time — and your life.”

Attention management has become a common practice for people who want to take charge of their lives and maintain control over their state and thoughts.

It increases productivity, which McKinsey simply puts as measuring the amount of value created for each hour that is worked in society.

What is the result of such increased productivity?

What we achieved is massively impressive.

Unlimited economic expansion leads to environmental degradation, fueling exponential growth and overproduction. Academic research underlines the human-related causes of these issues.

Academic works like Meadows, Daly, Martínez-Alier, Kallis, Victor, and many others highlight its adverse impact, emphasizing resource scarcity, climate crisis, biodiversity loss, and social inequalities.

These findings suggest the current economic growth model is unsustainable, calling for a profound change in our economic system.

Back in 2011, the United Nations released the article “Not Too Late to Change Unsustainable Economic Growth Model, Improve Relationship with Mother Earth, but “Time Is Running Short,” pointed out the following:

“The world’s current economic growth model — characterized by extreme production and consumption, slashed forests, and polluted air and water supplies — was operating at nature’s expense and, while it was not too late to change course and improve our relationship with Mother Earth, “time is running short.”

Economic growth is closely connected with the idea of welfare, which has lately become a solid part of our lifetime goals.

However, insights from a comparative study on welfare states, “Freedom and Happiness: A Comparative Study in Forty-four Nations in the Early 1990,” challenged the assumed link between welfare state size and human well-being, urging a reevaluation of our perceptions regarding economic prosperity.

What are the side effects of such an achievement on us?

Fueling unlimited productivity in favor of the old paradigm of the industrial age, we increase doses of self-control, a depleting resource that drains energy.

Depleting people face the consequences such as following:

• Stuck with routines and cannot think outside the box,
• Work without a sense of joy, avoid deep conversations,
• See others as “interrupting and toxic”,
• Refrain from asserting themselves,
• Polarize their worldview by a simplified “black and white” paradigm,
• Face decreased ability to make complex decisions,
• Halt their learning and inclusiveness of others’ opinions,
• And stifle their creativity and other human abilities.

Which is nothing but merely surviving.

I recently delved into Professor Roy Baumeister’s psychological research on self-regulation and self-control.

After conducting myriad tests with his colleagues, they concluded that depletion of self-control weakens the ability to block out disruptive thoughts, leading to a tendency towards negative thinking and heightened susceptibility to negative emotions.

This increased absorption of negativity can leave individuals feeling vulnerable, akin to being “without a skin.”

Depleted individuals are more inclined to give up on challenging tasks, lose courage, and make complex decisions, resulting in diminished performance in activities requiring stepping out of their comfort zone.

How did we sort out this situation?

A variety of emerging techniques assists in ever-enhancing self-control.

The widely accepted belief that “energy flows where attention goes” was applied to our nature, requiring that we control our lives by directing our attention at any given moment to thrive.

However, it seems neither humans nor the planet benefit from this. We somehow become the most destructive factor hindering our “progress” toward artificial priorities, goals, beliefs, and thoughts.

Do you believe you need more control or more passion in your life?

That’s all for today.

We'll talk again in two weeks.

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