For reasons that will soon become apparent, other people’s problems are easier to solve than your own. For example, Mimi’s excessive emotional reactions to the minor sins and misunderstandings that are an inevitable part of any budding relationship undermine the intimacy she earnestly desires. Mr. E’s excessive appetite for gambling has put everything dear to him at risk. Each is savvy enough to figure out how to get what they want in most domains of life, yet neither can figure out how to solve their most important problem. To add insult to injury, the problem and its solution appear obvious to most observers, including their friends and family, which makes their repeated failures all the more humiliating and puzzling.

In some ways, outside observers are in a better position to solve the problem because their perception and judgment are not distorted by intense emotional and motivational states, while the first-person perspective of your chosen hero is quite sensitive to such distortions.  Well-meaning observers tend to offer advice that is overly simplistic and fails to address the critical question: Why do Mimi and Mr. E voluntarily and repeatedly do things that everybody knows will lead them to bad outcomes?

The silver lining of recurring patterns of self-sabotage is that you can observe several examples of the perverse sequence of cause and effect responsible for the unwanted outcomes. The key to researching voluntary self-sabotage is to observe the sequence of external events and internal reactions from the outside [observer’s perspective] and from the inside [first-person perspective]. To solve this kind of problem, you must know yourself well enough to use cause-and-effect in the service of your interests and principles. The optical illusions below will give you a chance to observe how you transform an array of pixels on the screen into meaningful images in your mind. The key is to observe the transformation from two perspectives:

• Third-person perspective: Observations of a researcher of visual perception
• First-person perspective: The personal experience of the subject who is taken in by the illusion.

The image you saw changed in the absence of any changes on the screen because the image doesn’t exist on the screen. Images are subjective phenomena that are created by and exist only within a living creature.  When you look at these graphics, your eye and brain transform raw optical data [the pixels] into subjective experience [the images].   A similar transformation takes place when you listen to music: The psyche creates subjective experiences (rhythms, melodies, emotional reactions, etc.) from raw auditory input (pressure waves vibrating the eardrum).   Without the transformation of objective data into subjective experience, you couldn’t react to the things that happen. 

Our sense organs don’t passively receive the truth about the external world.  Perception is a creative process; it’s something you do!   The pixels on the screen have no intrinsic meaning until you transform them into a meaningful image, which can then evoke an emotional, aesthetic, or sexual reaction.    The visual transformation of meaningless pixels into meaningful images is a metaphor for the transformation of sensory elements of all modalities —the Nominal Stimulus Pool [NSP] — into subjective reality. 

Just as it would be a mistake to assume that your first interpretation of the pixels was valid and complete, it would be a mistake to assume that your experience of reality was the same as reality.   The image you constructed out of the pixels was not the only possible interpretation of the objective data.  In the same way, our experience of reality is not the only possible interpretation of the NSP [analogous to the array of pixels Ocampo serves us].   What we regard as reality is our nervous system’s best attempt to map the external world, so we can cope with it.  

With the sole exception of Lewis Carroll’s map (which scales a mile to the mile), all models of reality come with the Map-Territory Disclaimer: The map is not the same as the territory.  The disclaimer is worth mentioning, even though it is blatantly obvious at an abstract level, because Darwinian forces demand that biological creatures regard their perceptions as valid so they can respond to events in time.

Maps are fictions created to meet the needs of their users and the interests of their creators. Google Maps, for example, helps users navigate unfamiliar territory. For a fee, Google will highlight your business location so that it appears larger and more salient on the map than it objectively is. Likewise, my subjective reality is a fictional model I create to navigate the stressors and temptations that come my way.  Like Google Maps, the representation of reality that I create ignores some details and accentuates others depending on my needs at the moment.

The difference between a model and the real thing is self-evident when thinking about it abstractly, but when the situation demands an immediate reaction, you must regard your experience of reality as though it is the same as reality.  Accepting this necessary but bogus premise is a harmless concession to expedience as long as you remember that your current perception of the things that happen and your judgment of how to react to it is state-dependent. Mr. E’s appraisal of the wisdom of a detour through Las Vegas is distorted differently during the remorseful state following a relapse [“it would be the worst decision of my life”] than when he is driving through the high desert while on vacation to get away for the stress of the office. At that moment, his map of reality is so distorted by his proximity to the incentive that he expects that a Las Vegas detour will have a positive outcome.  From the dispassionate, third-person perspective, we are skeptical of his naive prediction and would bet that the actual outcome will include the sincere but familiar intention to never gamble again.

Even though Mr. E. has access to more information about his internal experience than we do, our predictions of what he will do and how it will turn out are probably better than his.  That’s because our judgment of what is true is not distorted by how close Mr. E is to the incentive of gambling, and his is.  Considering his history of recurring relapses and vows to never make that mistake again, you would expect that he would have figured this pattern out by now.  He doesn’t learn from experience because he is repeatedly taken in by the same illusion.  When the costs of gambling are close and the benefits far away, the remorseful version of Mr. E is in the driver’s seat.   His authentic first-person judgment is that the costs of gambling far exceed the benefits, and this will always be true.  Dispassionate observers like us agree that gambling will always fail a cost-benefit analysis for Mr. E.  Because we are dispassionate observers, our judgment doesn’t change as Mr. E approaches the casino; his does.  His first-person experience of reality is affected by his access to the incentive.   During the drive to Vegas, he is trance-formed from the remorseful but wiser Mr. E into the addict who authentically expects the outcome of a casino visit to be positive.  Both versions of Mr. E regard their current experience of reality as valid, and each is willing to make irreversible decisions based on it.   When he regards his experience of reality as the same as reality, he has been taken in by the Soul Illusion, and his first-person experience of his tragic mistake doesn’t protect him from being taken in by the same illusion in the future. 

The truth will make you free!  Your research to learn the truth began by exploring how you transformed visual data into meaningful images.  As you discovered, transforming pixels into a images is a creative process.  Subjective phenomena are not the same as objective data.  As your personal research demonstrated, you can be taken in by the bogus assumption that they are the same, and the map you create to represent reality is the same as the terrritory   Optical Illusions are harmless fun because you can recognize them right away.  The illusions that really take you in are much more dangerous  

Examples of the Soul Illusion:

• I have immaculate perception—Mimi feels certain that her dubious explanation for her partner’s absence is valid.  It came to mind spontaneously when she detected a warning sign of impending abandonment.  Of the possible explanations for his absence, the one in which her lover would abandon her for another woman was the most salient, even though it wasn’t the most likely.  Salience trumps evidence and reason.   In most domains of her life, Mimi’s judgments are “data-driven,” but in matters of the heart, she is uncharacteristically insensitive to data and reason.   The Map-Territory Fallacy [the bogus assumption that what she perceives as reality is the same as reality] is responsible for the twin curses:  
  • Gullibility — She gives assent to the belief that her lover will abandon her for another woman on the basis of insufficient evidence.
  • Dogmatism — Once she designates an interpretation as the true one, she becomes stubbornly loyal to it despite contradictory evidence and logic.

• My current perspective is permanent —  I see things as they really are, and so will always see things as I do now. After a relapse, it is obvious to Mr. E. that the costs of gambling far exceed the benefits.  Now that he “knows” the truth, he feels certain that he has solved his problem and will never gamble again.

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote this poem about his daughter. It could have been written about Mimi by Ernest, her ex, who loved her deeply and saw her as the ideal partner for life. . . .  that is, until he met the horrid version.  As he describes it: “One night we got into a fight over some minor oversight on my part — I got hung up on the computer and showed up 20 minutes late for our date.  By the time I got there, she had transformed into a monster with thin skin and sharp claws.”  Mimi hated his self-centered description of what happened that night; she experienced it differently.  As she explained to her cousin, “It’s like there are two versions of me. The normal me is kind and sweet, but when I think that the guy who claims he will always love and take care of me will dump me for another woman, I change.  Instead of wanting him to feel my love for him, I want him to feel the pain he caused me.”

The first time Ernest witnessed the transformation of the sweet, caring Mimi into the monster with thin skin and sharp claws, he was taken aback but blew it off.   Now, when he thinks about entering into a lifetime partnership with her, he feels a burning need to  know: “Which one is the real Mimi?”  

In his masterpiece, “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” Stephenson describes the transformation of a good soul into a monster, induced by drinking a potion the well-meaning doctor created with the best of intentions.  Likewise, with the best of intentions, Mimi’s body creates a potion that makes her physically strong enough to fight or flee when she encounters a threat to her life.  The downside of this protective potion is that it will turn her into a monster if she takes too much.  To understand her emotional overreaction to ambivalent information about her boyfriend’s trustworthiness, it is helpful to know about her unfortunate history of abuse at the hands of her mother’s boyfriend and her mother’s unwillingness to believe her daughter’s report.   

You can personally experience a very mild dose of this trance-formational potion by letting Stevenson’s fiction induce an adrenaline rush.  You have to collaborate with the author, because even though he is a clear and evocative writer,  his contribution is just a string of letters on the page until you invest your attention and imagination to transform them into subjective reality.  Your contribution involves more than simply comprehending the words and creating the images to go with them;  you must give assent.   Unless you suspend your disbelief and regard the artist’s fiction as though it were true, horror stories are boring.   If you bought a ticket to a horror movie, you were seeking a thrill; a quickened pulse shows that your collaboration with the artists was successful, resulting in Intentional Trance Formation.

“As great an artist as he was, Stevenson’s ability to create fictions that evoke terror pales in comparison to Mimi’s.  The thoughts and images she created during the 20 or so minutes she spent waiting for her boyfriend to show up for their date triggered the release of fight-or-flight hormones, including adrenaline and cortisol, which, like Dr. Jekyll’s potion, changed her biologically.  Mimi’s impressive creative faculties enabled her to induce a transformation of her body without the use of drugs or any other external aid.   Sadly, the trance she induced was poorly aligned with her intentions to establish a tender, trusting lifetime partnership with Ernest.   As he explained his relationship difficulties to his buddies: “She changed from the sweetheart who gives me joy to the monster who gives me pain.”

Mimi’s unwanted change resulted from her emotional reaction to a fiction she created from the limited information available to her [all she knew was that he didn’t show up when he said he would].  Her error was acting as though she knew the cause of his absence when she did not.  That premature judgment triggered a biological reaction that transformed her.  Her fury was temporary, but its effects were irreversible.  If her theory was true, he got what he deserved; however, if he was innocent, she ruined the safe, loving relationship she wanted so badly.   She has gone through many boyfriends, and not all of them were as guilty as she judged them to be.

Ironically, the initially bogus assumption that anyone who claimed to love her would ultimately abandon her created a subjective reality in which she was bound to act in ways that made her fiction come true.  Self-Fulfilling Prophecies, like this one, illustrate the recursive relationship between handicapping expectations and objective outcomes.

Not all examples of voluntary self-sabotage have this recursive feature, but they all involve Unintentional Trance Formation. The tale of Mr. E will give you the opportunity to observe the phenomenon of trance-formation and experience it personally. Imagine this scene: After his last relapse, he tells his wife, “I see now that gambling is a terrible choice; it brings me more pain than pleasure, and I don’t want to do it anymore.” Nevertheless, it wasn’t long before he voluntarily walked into a casino and gambled. His failure to act as he intended would surprise his business associates, who know him as a competent fellow who can usually figure out how to get what he wants. He sincerely wants to quit gambling; why does he repeatedly fail to act as he intends? Neither he nor his wife can answer that question. There is an answer, and within a few minutes, you will know it both abstractly and personally.

Earlier, you observed the transformation of visual data, an array of pixels, into meaningful images. This kind of research required you to study cause and effect from the third-person perspective of a dispassionate researcher and the first-person perspective of the subject of the research. Something new and extraordinary emerged from the collaboration, and it is the key that will enable you and him to solve the mystery of Mr. E’s voluntary self-sabotage. The transformation of Ocampo’s ambiguous pixels into meaningful images was interpreted differently by the researcher and the subject. From the collaboration of the two perspectives emerged the Metacognitive Perspective, which is the key to knowing yourself.

Like Ocampo’s art, the fictional tale of Mr. E is intended to evoke a subjective reaction that you can observe from the Metacognitive Perspective. You can benefit from his painful education by using his tale as you would any fiction. So suspend your disbelief and imagine you are the main character soon after a relapse. He is disgusted by his failure, and so is his wife. He swears to her, “I’ve learned my lesson this time, and I will never gamble again!” She’s been to this movie before and replies, “You’re full of shit! I know you better than you know yourself, and you’re going to do what you always do. You are going to gamble as soon as you get the chance.” If you can imagine the argument from her perspective, you’ll experience one reality; imagine it from his perspective, and you’ll experience a different reality.

Now, take a few moments to think about this question: He has observed the same history of vows and failures that she has. Why is he blind to what is so obvious to her (and everyone else)? Neither his first- nor third-person perspective alone knows him well enough to answer, but his research team can see that he makes irreversible decisions during psychological states that will certainly change. He can’t see what his wife and the others can see because he is observing it from the inside while they observe it from the outside. But they can’t see what causes him to react as he does, even though they can see the antecedent condition and his consequent actions. The collaboration of the two perspectives has a greater understanding of cause and effect than either point of view has alone.

The solution to the mystery of Mr. E’s recurring pattern of vows and failures: The pain of a relapse induces a remorseful trance characterized by the sincere desire to remain abstinent from gambling. He assumes he will always feel the same way (after all, it’s true). However, subjective reality is state-dependent; when next he encounters temptation, he will be trance-formed. Each version of Mr. E feels authentic at the moment and judges the other as defective:

1. Induction of the trance of remorse: His point of view after his most recent relapse was as a self-loathing loser who had lost control over his actions and destroyed everything he worked for his entire lifetime to build. In hindsight, he judged his decision to gamble a mistake and would undo it if he could. He understood that overt actions are irreversible, but he could prevent future catastrophes by swearing never to gamble again. Making the commitment to abstain from gambling was a no-brainer; he was taken in by the illusion that since he now knows the truth, he would always judge gambling the same way.
2. Induction of the trance of temptation: Sometime later, when the pain caused by gambling was far away, and circumstance brought the incentive closer, its immediacy exerts a progressively greater influence on his subjective reality. The version of Mr. E making decisions during high-risk situations perceives and judges reality differently from the one who sincerely intended never to gamble again.

To induce trance #1, imagine the thoughts and images that would go through your mind if you lost more money than you could afford, and felt that you failed yourself and your family.  The more detailed your fictional, first-person thoughts and imagery are, the more authentic your emotional reaction will be and the more interesting your exploration . . . . (See if you can induce this state change now).

If you were able to elicit frustration, self-loathing, or shame, congratulations!  You used your cognitive and imaginative faculties to transform abstract data [words on the screen] into a subjective reality that evoked a change in your emotional/motivational state.   Now that you have demonstrated the ability to change your psychological state intentionally, you can contrast that with the Unintentional Trance Formations responsible for Mr. E’s perverse pattern of resolving to quit gambling and then gambling.

Approximating Mr. E’s remorseful trance was easy because you can identify with a remorseful reaction to making a costly mistake when you should have known better.   Replicating trance induction #2 is more challenging, especially if you don’t have a history of losing the battle with temptation.  In that case, this exercise, like using heavier weights to build muscle, will strengthen the cognitive and imaginative faculties required to induce Intentional Trance-Formation.  So, once again, suspend your disbelief and imagine you are seeing the world through Mr. E’s eyes.  He is giving himself a vacation “to get away from it all.”   After a few days camping around Yosemite, he’s on the road to visit his buddy in Arizona when he realizes that if he took a short detour, he could spend the night at his favorite four-star hotel in Las Vegas.  His covert dialog: “I’m taking a week off work because I need a break from the stress.  I could spend the night at a dingy Comfort Inn in the middle of nowhere or at a four-star hotel for fifty bucks.” When he imagines what his wife would say if she overheard that comment, he explains, “It’s not the gambling, what I really want is a relaxing vacation.  The luxury of a great hotel room, fantastic food, and entertainment is what I need.”  If his wife were actually sitting next to him, she would judge that statement as an intentional fabrication designed to justify going to the casino. But she would be reading him wrong.  Despite all his faults, Mr. E is an honest man; his claim is not deception, as a lie-detector test would show.  His sin was ignorance of himself, not deceit.  While on the road thinking about that dialogue with his wife, he was not intending to gamble.  However, once he arrived at the hotel, the casino’s immediate availability transformed him.

Mr. E.’s failure to anticipate what would happen to him as he neared the casino demonstrates that he doesn’t know himself.   The silver lining of his painful mistake is that it gives his research team the opportunity to study cause and effect from the outside and the inside.  When he does, he will meet: The Problem of Immediate Gratification [the PIG] — the hyperbolic relationship between the trance-formative power of an incentive and its immediacy [in terms of space, time, or psychological distance].   The trance-formative power of the incentive increased gradually at first. Since the relationship is hyperbolic, as he got closer to the incentive, its influence increased progressively rapidly; so rapidly, in fact, that the trance-formation occurred before he knew what hit him, and the man who promised his wife he would never gamble has been replaced by an alter ego who inhabited a different reality.   He did not lose control of the vehicle; he lost control over who was operating it.

Unlike his solemn vow to quit gambling, his overt actions are irreversible. While he cannot undo his self-sabotaging action, he can prevent himself from making the same mistake again.  Choosing to gamble was clearly a mistake, but it was a far greater mistake to do so after promising not to.  The financial cost of his relapse made his financial situation worse than before; breaking his promise to his wife was destructive to his marriage.  But the most destructive consequence was the damage to his belief that he would do what he said he would.   As luck would have it, the gambling metaphor is well-suited to illustrate this point: When Mr. E makes a commitment, he is making a bet that he will adhere to it.  If he honors his word, he wins, and his belief that he does what he says he will do is strengthened.  There is no requirement that he make a commitment; he does so, often publicly, as a voluntary guarantee to strengthen his resolve: It is a statement that:“This is more than an intention, I’m betting my reputation that I will accomplish it.”  Because he is guaranteeing the outcome, he is giving long odds, so more is lost on a single failure than is won from many successes. Each time he does what he swore he would never do, subsequent vows of abstinence are worth less, until his word is worth nothing.

The dirty little joke below serves the same function as Ocampo’s artwork; they are both objective stimuli that can evoke a reaction after you interpret their meaning. Making meaning is where the magic happens, and these stimuli give you the opportunity to observe the creation of meaning from both the researcher’s third-person perspective and the subject’s first-person perspective.

A farmer’s wife is in the kitchen doing the dishes when her husband walks in carrying a goat.

He says, “I want to introduce you to the pig I’ve been fucking.”

She says, “You moron, that isn’t a pig, it’s a goat.”

He says, “I was talking to the goat.”

The joke’s punchline reveals a different interpretation of cause-and-effect than the one you initially assumed to be true, which elicits the subjective experience of getting a joke.  You can observe the reaction from both the outside and the inside; the researcher’s and the subject’s experiences are qualitatively different.   Neither perspective alone is sufficient to fully appreciate what happens when you get a joke.

The first-person experience of getting a joke is not available to the third-person perspective, and feels similar to the phenomena elicited by other reveals. Recall your experience of the reveal at the climax of a detective story or the reveal of how a magic trick was performed. The fact that you had a biological reaction to the reveal of what was true indicates that your initial assumptions about what was true were wrong. With this in mind, you can derive more than amusement from jokes, magic shows, and other reveals by using them as first-person reminders of how easily you can be taken in.

Understand this: You don’t have access to the truth, and are easily taken in by the assumption that you do [the Soul Illusion]. The images that you “see with your own eyes,” like the reality you experience with all your being, are fictions that you confabulated to make sense of the ambiguous information you receive through your senses. Your appraisal of the validity of your map of reality is distorted by the same biological predispositions and conditioning history that created the map. It’s not that you don’t know what is true, it’s that you can’t know what is true. There is no way to avoid the biases that emerge from your particular biological predispositions, conditioning history, and current circumstances.

The ancient Greeks not only understood the limitations of human knowledge and the dangers “of believing that one knows when one does not,” but they chiseled the solution into the entrance of the Temple of Appollo in Delphi.

Carved into the stone at the entrance of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi are the 3 Delphic Maxims.  Their placement at the entrance reveals what those seeking guidance from the Oracle. needed to know before they asked about their future and what they should do.  The Oracle was not a fortune teller, though she was never wrong.  Anyone seeking supernatural knowledge of what would happen to them in the future was too naïve to benefit from her counsel.  Even the god, Apollo, who spoke through the Oracle, couldn’t foretell what their future would bring, because the seeker was assumed to be a responsible adult who would decide which course of action to take.  Responsibility for the decisions was the seeker’s, not Apollo’s.

Three Pearls of Wisdom

• Nothing to Excess: In retrospect, we appreciate how sound this advice is, but, being all too human, we haven’t followed it. Allowing excesses of appetite or emotion to dictate our actions has caused problems, which, as you may have noticed, are deceptively difficult to solve.
• Know Thyself: The solution requires that you know yourself. I’ve been a psychologist for a long time, and I assure you that no psychologist can understand you well enough to solve your problem. They don’t have access to the most important data: the effective cause of your actions; that is only available from the first-person perspective. The invitations to observe how you transform objective data into subjective experience gave you the opportunity to become familiar with the collaborative method of researching the distortions you introduce when transforming objective into subjective reality. To understand what’s going on, you have to observe the transformation of information from two perspectives:
  • Psychological — observing the transformation of objective data to subjective experience from the outside [third-person perspective of a dispassionate researcher].
  • Phenomenological — observing the same transformation from the inside [how it is experienced from the first-person perspective of the subject].
• Certainty Brings Ruin: In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice; in practice, there is. This is so because from the first-person perspective, there is no difference between objective and subjective truth; from the third-person perspective, there is.  In other words, from the first-person perspective, “seeing is believing.”  From the researcher’s third-person perspective, there is obviously a difference between reality and the subject’s experience of it.   The researcher is not taken in by the illusions that result from the subject’s first-person perspective; the subject is.  Being fooled into believing something that is not true is particularly costly for those who feel certain that their experience of reality is the same as reality.

I wanted a photo of myself for this website, so I went through the ones I had, looking for the least embarrassing one. I chose this one because I thought it makes me look good, better, in fact, than I actually look. This realization led to a sequence of thoughts: “Maybe I’m deceiving the public by misrepresenting my appearance. . . . Wait a minute, maybe this photo is accurate, and it’s the others that make me look worse than I really look.”   While these self-focused ruminations evoke emotional reactions in me, they are meaningless from any other perspective.   Each photo shows how I looked from a particular camera angle at a particular time. There is no “most valid” camera point of view, just as there is no most valid point of view from which to judge an event. Likewise, there is no correct perspective from which to judge my value, lovability, shame-worthiness, etc.

A professional photographer intentionally positions the camera to evoke the intended reaction [aesthetic or emotional] in the viewer.  Like the photographer, Mimi and Mr. E have the freedom — some would say, the responsibility — to choose a point of view that promotes their intended outcome.  The idea of purposely choosing a point of view rather than passively accepting the default may evoke ruminations similar to mine above; for example, “I don’t want to misrepresent the truth for some selfish purpose.  As your personal research revealed, every subjective reality is a misrepresentation of the truth.  Like photographs, each shows how things appear (not how things really are) from one of the many possible points of view that could have been selected.  Your appraisals of the validity of the fictions you create are worthless because they are distorted by the same biological predispositions and conditioning history that created the fiction.

And now for the reveal: Since your appraisal of the validity of your own judgments can’t be the basis for your selection, Nietzsche advises using utility as your selection criterion.  Rather than passively accepting whatever perspective your biology and conditioning history have dealt you — and hence which you judge to be valid — let the artist, who intentionally positions the camera to achieve an intended effect on the viewer, be your guide for selecting your point of view during high-risk situations.

Every observation must be made from some point of view — you cannot take a photograph or interpret the things that happen from “no particular perspective.”   If you don’t intentionally choose your perspective, your biology and conditioning history will choose it for you, and, like a marble rolling downhill, you will follow The Path of Least Resistance to wherever it leads.   If you can detect a pattern of unwanted outcomes in your history, you will benefit from Nietzsche’s suggestion.   The next sections describe how to create subjective realities that promote rather than sabotage your interests and principles. 

• Reification: Treating an abstract model as though it were the real thing.  Examples:
  • Regarding a map as though it were the same as the territory;
  • Treating beliefs, appraisals, or emotional reactions as though they described objective reality.  For example,  after Mimi’s breakup and Mr. E’s relapse, each feels like a failure. Reification occurs if they give assent to this interpretation and regard it as objectively true.
• De-reification:  The opposite of reification, recognizing that the fictions you create to depict reality are made up, and you could have created other, equally valid interpretations of the same data.
• Volition: Using your mental faculties to influence the course of events in favor of your interests and principles.
  • Just as you created different images from the same ambiguous array of pixels, you have the power to create different subjective realities from the Nominal Stimulus Pool [NSP] you were dealt.  Predictably, some of these maps of reality will lead you to better outcomes than others.  Will shows up as using all your faculties to navigate your way to the outcomes you want (as judged by your rational self).
• Suggestion: The intentional use of reification to induce trances well-matched to getting the outcomes you want.  Ordinarily, you would unintentionally reify whatever interpretation your history conditioned into you.   But when that is not working out well, you have the power and responsibility to choose a better one — one chosen on the basis of its utility, not your appraisal of its validity.
• Unintentional trance formation: What is typically labeled as pathology results from reifying a premise that, if true, would elicit an emotional or motivational reaction poorly matched to one’s desired outcome—for example, “those who are supposed to love me will ultimately hurt me” or “I feel certain that I won’t make the same mistake again.”
  • Negative Suggestion: Try not to let your nose itch. Be aware that scratching your nose within the next 60 seconds would suggest that you lack self-control.  See if you can make it for a full minute without touching your face near your nose before reading the reveal:
    • The ironic mechanism revealed: To determine if you are successful at having a nose that is not itching, you must compare your current sensations with your imagined experience of your nose itching.  Imagining your nose itching induces the ironic effect.
  • Intentional trance formation:  Reifying a premise on the basis of utility rather than on your appraisal of its validity (which is set by your biological predisposition and personal conditioning history).
    • The Heavy Leg Script from the venerable Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale will give you a chance to experience the phenomenon of hypnotic suggestion personally.  If you accept the invitation (click here) and play your part as the subject, you will personally experience your leg growing heavier and heavier, even though you know, on a rational level, that it weighs the same as always.

Volition is an art, similar in some ways to photography.  Both transform objective data into images capable of evoking subjective reactions in the viewer.  

There are many possible explanations for Mimi’s boyfriend’s tardiness.  However, unlike the professional photographer who intentionally chooses where to place the camera, Mimi’s perspective was chosen for her.  Rather than selecting a point of view because it was most likely to reveal the truth or because it would promote a desirable outcome, the most salient [attention-grabbing] perspective determined how she interpreted the things that happened. 

Mimi’s childhood traumas distorted her perspective of intimacy, but now she is an adult who has the responsibility to navigate herself to outcomes she judges to be desirable.  This responsibility informs the perspective from which to judge the actions of her intimate partner in the same way that the professional photographer positions the camera to achieve the intended purpose of the shot.

In domains where you have a history of unwanted outcomes, don’t let loyalty to your appraisal of what is true prevent you from following Nietaxhe’s recommendation.  Nobody, not Socrates, not Tolstoy, and in this domain certainly not you, knows the truth; those who think they do are punished for their arrogance by the unwanted outcomes of their premature judgments.  You can discover what is false, but not what is true. Seeking the truth by examining the same subject from different perspectives is the best strategy, but expecting to actually discover the truth is an example of “Einstein Insanity.“

Artistic ambition is one thing; actually evoking the intended reaction in the audience is another. Talented photographers improve with training and practice.  The thought experiment in which you pretended to be Mr. E. on the road to Las Vegas gave you some practice working with your faculties of attention and imagination to induce Intentional Trance Formation.   Now, you dedicate these same faculties to exercising with an old-fashioned hypnotic induction: the  “Heavy Leg Script” from the venerable Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale.  The first listen will prepare you to do your part of the collaboration the next time you listen.  So, suspend your belief about what is true and give assent to these bogus suggestions.

Different ways of interpreting the things that happen are continually battling for your assent, because the winner gets to live as your subjective reality and so can influence how you react emotionally and behaviorally, while all the other possible interpretations are relegated to die in oblivion. We all have the tendency to interpret the things that happen from the perspective dictated by our biological predispositions and personal conditioning history, which is analogous to taking a photograph from wherever the camera happened to be at that moment.  A serious photographer positions the camera in the service of evoking an intended reaction in the viewer.  The path of least resistance is to continue to accept your automatic interpretations of the things that happen. The path of greatest advantage requires that you choose the point of view from which you interpret the things that happen. 

For example, the root of Mimi’s problem is that she automatically gives assent to the bogus assumption: “Those who are supposed to love me will ultimately hurt me.” As a result, she tends to interpret the normal mishaps that happen to couples in ways that evoke reactions poorly suited to establishing a secure and loving relationship. Unfortunately, Mimi is stuck with the realities of her history, but she has the power to choose her perspective — the point of view from which she interprets the things that happen in the present. We, as spectators, can only watch as Mimi unconsciously chooses the interpretation that will determine how she interprets her boyfriend’s boorish, but typical male missteps. Will her judgment be biased by her conditioning history or her current interests and principles? She has the power to choose, and so do you.

Volition, the power to intentionally influence the course of events, is the reward for completing a developmental passage that nobody can take for you, nor spare you. The passage from the carefree mentality of childhood to the existential realization that you have a finite amount of time to do whatever you choose. The ancient Stoics studied how to maximize your powers of volition and cautioned against wasting your time being angry or frustrated by bad outcomes. They would much prefer that you dedicate your precious energy and talents to working with what you do control. The primary message of this school of thought is the Serenity Prayer: Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

As an adult, you have the responsibility to choose how you will use the time you have, for example: maximize your pleasure, do good works, accomplish what you judge to be important, etc.  The challenge is to get the creature you inhabit to act as you will  Perhaps you’ve noticed that your body has a mind of its own.  Freud used the analogy of the horse and rider: The ego is like a rider on horseback, who is able to guide the horse only when the beast is willing. But when the horse encounrters a mare in heat, the animal’s passions, not the rider’s intentions will likely determine where the rider ends up. Nevertheless, a well-trained horse is more likely to follow the rider’s will. Here is one approach to exercising your will by training the creature you inhabit:

1. 1. Use the personal research method to observe the sequence of external events and internal reactions that typically lead you to bad outcomes.  That is, observe the sequence from the first- and third-person perspectives.  Review several examples of the sequence until you arrive at a collaborative understanding of the cause-and-effect mechanisms driving it.
   2. Know yourself well enough to recognize the sequence of external events and internal reactions that takes you to the outcomes you want.  Of particular interest is the high-risk situation that induced the Unintentional Trance Formation — that is, where state-dependent phenomena such as judgment, motivation, and response probability distribution changed.  [For example, that moment occurred for Mimi when her adrenal potion transformed her into the monster].
   3. Suspend your beliefs about what is true.  The Greek Skeptics recommended that you develop your ability to withhold judgment and simply collect data for as long as possible before you give assent and decide to accept a particular interpretation.  For example, for Mimi to prevent her fight-or-flight reaction from ruining her love life she must replace the map of intimacy that was conditioned into her when she was young with one more likely to help her navigate to the outcome she wants.
   4. Accept the suggestion by reacting as if it were true.   Hypnotic inductions are useful practice to enhance your skill of intentionally influencing your subjective reality.