Devil's advocate

I read somewhere that some big corporates have a team of people who spend all their time just thinking of ways and conditions that may lead to a drop in revenue and profits, in other words doing nothing but playing the devil's advocate.

Now I think if applied on a personal level, it may be useful too. So one week we may find some time to brainstorm all unwise actions, behaviour and thoughts that can bring misery to ourselves, In another week we may contemplate things that may happen which will depress us and reflect on how we should react and what we can do to lessen the pain if they do happen. This may sound like the opposite of positive psychology and may not be appropriate for people who are already depressed or moody. Yet, just like the corporates do it to ensure relevance and avoid extinction, we may do it to ensure we do not fall into an emotional abyss, act or think unwisely with unfavourable consequences or just having a meaningless living-dead existence.

One may question whether such negative philosophy is healthy for the mind but many have opined that positive psychology has severe shortcomings too. Positive psychology has been found to have short term effect on some people. One opinion has it that people may also feel guilty for not thinking happy thoughts and for bringing it upon themselves when they are having hard times. It is a bit like suppressing one's negative feelings instead of meeting them.

I guess just like in the Pixar movie Inside Out, one has to welcome all emotions to live a balanced life. As for optimism and pessimism we can use both at different times where appropriate. So for instance we can wake up every morning being appreciative and calling to mind 5 things to be thankful of whilst spending some time in a week thinking of what may bring us misery and how to manage the situation when they happen. Its like meeting the Devil to be free of the Devil.

Philosophy of Pessimism in Marriage

2  things in Alain Botton's article on "Why you will marry the wrong person" interest me. He  offers many factors but I will focus on his point that people tend to look for familiarity even when logic tells them it doesn't offer happiness. He thinks that there is this tendency to "re-create, within our relationships, the feelings we know so well in childhood........thus rejecting certain candidates for marriage not because they are wrong but because they are too right....that in our hearts, such rightness feels foreign. We marry the wrong people because we don't associate being loved with feeling happy".

In one of my earlier blogs I have related how one of my child client has repeatedly asked to play the role of an abused maid in our play therapy until the fetish subsided. She was a subject of child abuse. I had the inkling that it was an obsessive compulsive syndrome. My understanding of the syndrome then was the urge to re-create a similar situation with the hope that "this time round" they (the affected) can do it right and win back the love they deserved. Alain Botton in this article offers another perspective that for some people being loved may not equate to being happy. I really got to think about this but I guess both reasonings are possible given that the mind is such an unfathomable thing and every individual's mind is unique.

Now onto onto the brighter side of the article and something which I can relate. Botton encourages people to forgo wishful romanticism for " a tragic awareness that every human will frustrate, anger, annoy, madden and disappoint us-and we will (without malice) do the same", what he calls a philosophy of pessimism. The person who can "negotiate differences in taste intelligently" , the "person who is good at disagreement" is the most compatible for us.

I remember reading about a couple in their 80s when asked about the key to a long lasting marriage remarked that the only secret is to have low expectations. Now I think that is exactly how my husband manages to live with me. I on the other hand still entertain hope that I can nag and scold him into dropping his irritating habits. So when will I learn to give up hope and adopt Botton's "philosophy of pessimism". Don't tell me I have already fallen into the trap thinking that to Love someone is to make HIM Miserable! LOL

Saving Habits- Doing it right

In an article "Parents, let your children keep their money at home" an economist opined that enforcing a child to save his allowance in a bank or a locked piggy bank may have the unintended result of the child being a spendthrift in later years. Apparently programmes that aimed at cultivating saving habits failed to have much effect.

She reckoned that children can  only cherish money in its physical form just like their toys. Hence showing them some printed numbers in a bank book or the invisible content of a piggy bank do not give them a sense of possession. Depriving them of control over their money may result in them spending recklessly once they have physical money. Instead letting the child hold the cash and discussing with them whether it is wise to part with it for some instant gratification may cultivate better saving habits.The economist did however make reservations that many researchers conclude that saving habits are not learned but more associated with personality traits and genetics.

From a personal perspective I think it is both a learnt habit and a cultural trait. Asians are more avid savers than westerners probably because they want to provide for themselves in the long run and even for their children whenever possible. From young I watched with fascination my mother pushing folded one dollar notes through a slit into a little bronze squirrel issued by a bank. When she could not push in any more notes she unlocked the door catch at its bottom and out came the money which I helped her count before banking into her account. When I was a teenager I also accompanied her to renew bank deposits and could feel her delight when the new deposit was greater than the original. In a way you could say she instilled in me the love for money. Whether it is good or bad to have a fetish for money is a different story altogether.

Just the other day over dinner my son and me were discussing about the famous delayed gratification experiment. (The Stanford marshmallow experiment was a series of studies on delayed gratification in the late 1960s and early 1970s led by psychologist Walter Mischel, then a professor at Stanford University. In these studies, a child was offered a choice between one small reward provided immediately or two small rewards (i.e., a larger later reward) if they waited for a short period, approximately 15 minutes, during which the tester left the room and then returned. (The reward was sometimes a marshmallow, but often a cookie or a pretzel.) In follow-up studies, the researchers found that children who were able to wait longer for the preferred rewards tended to have better life outcomes, as measured by SAT scores, educational attainment, body mass index (BMI), and other life measures)-wikipedia.

My son remarked jokingly that for Asian baby boomers, we not only delayed our gratification for 15 minutes. We actually delayed for a lifetime never tasting the "marshmallow"  but amassing them for our children and grand children.

Nevertheless we are trying hard to correct this excessive saving habit and amongst friends are nudging one another to spend our children's inheritance.

I Love Surprises???

Researchers have found that novelty activates a number of brain systems especially the dopamine system which is involved in learning and memory. Research by UCL psychologists have shown that exposure to new experiences improves memory.  


"When we are confronted by a novel task, our prefrontal cortex works very hard, but as we become familiar with the task, the prefrontal cortex becomes less necessary," Dr. Goldberg said. According to him people who are indifferent or rejects novelty stand the risk of "mental autopilot" when they are just content with routines. They do not provide the opportunities for stimulation which may then lead to "deficiencies in structure and function in the right hemisphere, particularly in the prefrontal cortex".

 I have also read that babies learn best when there are elements of surprises. For example when the function of a toy comes as a surprise to a baby ie. something he never expects, he tends to focus and learns more about the object.

Now I am not an ageist but from my observation of elderly people (myself inclusive) many do not really like surprises especially those that make them uncomfortable. Speaking for myself I don't really relish too much of a novelty or challenges. I attribute this behaviour to 2 main factors, 1) fear or lack of confidence and 2) content with the mundane (please don't rock my boat). 

Recently I attended a course where there were many younger participants (being the oldest in class is getting more frequent nowadays... sigh). There was an exercise where we had to read brief cases, analyse a bit and then fill in a "complex" decision matrix (complex to me, reinforced by various colour codes) based on the intensity of  4 factors each with several sub headings for each case. Wow that caused my heartbeat to gallop. Before I could even understand the workings of the matrix I had to read the cases. It didn't help that I have always been a slow reader. When my neighbour started turning the pages of the handout I began to panic. Actually if I have more confidence in myself and not too worried about appearing as slow in the mind I would certainly have done better and enjoyed more. Yet this may be a deterrent from attending more mind challenging courses until I manage my ego problem.

The second reason which I alluded to is the contentment with the mundane and indifference to novelty. I find myself increasingly shrugging off my shoulders when reading about new exploits of the young and dismissing them with the remark "CRAZY". The problem is I don't even give the subject more attention or focus to learn more as would a baby engaging a new toy. Another of such feeling is that of being "resigned" to this impossibly fast changing world and suppressing it in the "I know it ALL" attitude.

Fortunately I am fearful of one thing, dementia and mind degradation. This fear I believe will propel or force me to embrace novelties. Oh SURPRISE SURPRISE " I love SURPRISES" even if it means the tour guide looking at me sympathetically and declaring "Sorry madam there is no turning back and we have only covered less than half the route" ie. Biting off more than I can chew.