Welcome to Stoic Snippets,
The track that is short in time but not in depth.
The Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman talks about there being two selves,
The experiencing self and their remembering self.
When we ask people about their happiness,
These two things get confounded and confused.
I could be grinning ear to ear about the rugby game that happened this weekend where England played oh so well,
But I could think about my life as a whole as not being very good.
Both things can exist.
In fact,
After this very game,
There may be a low.
I may not be nearly as excited,
But my thinking about my life may stay the same.
My experiencing self will fluctuate heavily throughout my life,
But my remembering self would be far more stable.
You can imagine this as life enjoyment versus life satisfaction.
In a great experiment with colonoscopies,
Yes I just said that,
They measured the pain and discomfort the patients were in,
And then also how they reported the procedure went as a whole.
What they found was pretty striking.
If the painful part of the procedure was left till the end,
People reported that the entire procedure was really dreadful and awful.
If the painful part of the procedure was more towards the middle or the beginning,
Then they said that things weren't so bad.
When they compared that to the levels of discomfort and stress that they reported during the procedure,
They found that there was a disconnect.
Even if it was a highly discomforting procedure,
If the ending was not bad,
And it was even pleasurable,
Then they thought the procedure was fine,
Okay,
Or even good.
However,
On the flip side,
Even if they reported that they were in very little discomfort or pain,
If that pain was at the end,
Then they reported that the procedure was not nice.
Believe it or not,
They've used this information to now make colonoscopies last longer so the ending is not the painful part,
Tricking you into thinking that the procedure wasn't as bad as you thought.
Just so you know,
This is not an isolated incident.
This has been replicated many times with ice baths where you have two options.
One,
The ice bath is simply one you get into,
And then you get out once your time has expired.
Or another option is that you stay in the ice bath and warm water is slowly added back in as your time finishes.
People who had the water added back in found that it was far more pleasurable as an experience,
Even though the temperature was exactly the same during the cold period.
This has given rise to a term known as peak-end theory.
The fact that how things end has a far greater weight on how things actually went.
And you kind of know this from sayings like,
All's well that ends well.
For instance,
If you listen to your favourite piece of music and the last note is wrong,
You may come to the conclusion,
Rather annoyed,
That the song is ruined.
Even though 99% of the song was very good.
Whatever happens last is remembered more vividly due to a phenomenon known as the recency effect,
And since the remembering self is far more important than the experiencing self,
The end is the most important thing.
Now this is highly irrational,
But it is true nonetheless.
So how do we interpret this and how do we make our lives better using Stoicism?
Well,
We reframe the story.
As they tell us in Stoicism,
It's not what happens to us that counts,
But how we react.
And more specifically,
The story that we tell ourselves is more important than what actually happened.
As a way of a personal example,
Probably the most,
Maybe the most hurtful thing I've been through is the passing of my father.
And it crushed me.
But what I recognised was exactly what they found in these experiments.
The end is more important than everything else.
Despite the fact that my dad had been alive for 58 years and having a life of adventure and happiness,
I focused on the 10 seconds of tragedy where he died.
I chose to focus on his death.
And this is a strange thing to do.
It's what we do when we're not thinking rationally.
Instead,
I choose to celebrate his life now.
I don't think about the end or his death as the most important thing.
I think about his life as the most important thing.
I choose not to think about the last note in the song.
I choose to think about the entire symphony.
That's how we get around this peak end fallacy.
Now,
Another trick you can do is to extend the timeline,
Just like they did in the colonoscopy experience.
Extend the timeline,
Change when the end is.
Again,
With my father's death,
I don't think about his death as the end.
I still speak about him to people I know.
I still talk to him even in my head.
His death wasn't the end by any stretch of the imagination.
And now that my son has been born,
He has the exact same eyes and eyebrows as my dad.
So once again,
I see him again and again.
His death was not the end.
It was just a moment in time.
So whatever you heard,
Reconsider the ending,
How important it is,
And also consider keeping that story going.
As long as you are alive,
Then the end is not written.
As Viktor Frankl tells us,
Everything can be taken from a man except one thing,
The last of the human freedoms,
To choose one's attitude in any set of circumstances.
It's not easy,
But it is important.
Good luck out there.
If you'd like to learn more about stoicism in person,
Then please do reach out via Insight Timer and inquire about my New Year's retreat.
I look forward to hearing from you.
