King Solomon was the third Jewish king and was considered a model of wisdom among his subjects. People traveled great distances to seek his advice and watch how gracefully the son of David twirled his legendary ring with wise engravings. But when it came to the king himself, wisdom left him. The fact that the ring did not work is evidenced by a series of short-sighted decisions that led to the collapse of the kingdom: hundreds of concubines, boasting of one’s wealth, neglect of raising his son (who later became a tyrant), waste of the state treasury.
The term "Solomon's Paradox" originated in a study by scientists Ethan Cross, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, and Igor Grossman, Ph.D., at the University of Waterloo. It denotes a situation where a person can give wise and effective advice to other people - but at critical moments he himself cannot abstract himself, give himself advice and follow it.
Why do we want to help each other
We owe the desire to help other people to the development of the neocortex. Species in which it is not developed are devoid of maternal instinct: for example, baby reptiles after birth are forced to fight off their relatives, who see only food in their offspring.
We can observe the development of empathy using the example of children. A one-year-old child is already able to feel anxiety when another baby falls next to him: he can immediately put his thumb in his mouth, as if he had hurt himself. Older children become aware of their own identity and the fact that they are separate from other people. They try to solve the problem in more cunning ways, for example, offering a soft toy to the injured child. By the age of two, children come to understand that other people's feelings are different from their own feelings. The peak development of empathy occurs towards the end of childhood: during this period, children realize that suffering exists beyond the specific moment. At this age, they can empathize with the plight of an entire group of people, such as the poor.
Darwin believed that the nature of empathy was selfish motivation.
When you see someone suffering, it triggers memories of your own suffering, and you begin to experience intense discomfort (also called emotional resonance). And in order to reduce it, you help another person.
You are an example for your child
We should never forget that for children, the most eloquent example in everything is their parents. The foundations of relationships are laid in the family; how you communicate with people is how your baby will behave. They copy all the habits and actions of their mothers and fathers.
Never allow yourself to scream and swear in the presence of a child, no matter how angry you are. You need to remember to be polite. Even if people persistently force their opinions on you, politely ask them not to do this, explaining that you will remain unconvinced. They will lose the desire to give advice. If they are not going to be implemented.
If your child was given a toy that scared him and he began to cry, do not rush to accuse the person of inability to choose the right toy. Thank the person and explain that the baby does not yet understand that toys cannot cause injury and should not be afraid of them. After the guest leaves, you can talk to the child and explain to him the inappropriateness of fear. If a toy makes him afraid, then it is better to give it to someone who will appreciate the gift.
Why is it difficult to give advice to yourself?
Let's imagine a situation: you went to the pool to practice your crawl swimming technique. The horizon is clear, the path belongs only to you. You gracefully jump into the water, old ladies sitting on sun loungers take turns rating you. You have three tens. But then - “BAM”, sparkles in the eyes. You hit your head on something unknown. You raise your head and assess the threat: it is a teenager of about fourteen. If he was also rude to you and splashed water in your face, you will feel righteous anger and direct it towards a lightning-fast aggressive solution to the problem.
This activated the amygdala: in response to a stimulus, it produces an emotional reaction much faster than the prefrontal cortex has time to conduct a “cold” analysis. The amygdala is also responsible for the formation of aggression; it made your fists clench, your pulse quicken, and set you up to “fight or flee.”
At a certain level of stress, it is no longer you who takes responsibility for your actions, but the archaic center of the brain, which seizes control in the most hopeless circumstances that require quick reactions, when reflection can cost you your life.
Thanks to the adrenaline rush, you get an incredible surge of energy. And in the media they will only talk about this as “the Hulk beat a child in the pool with superhuman strength.” Being captive of emotions, you were unable to give an objective assessment of the case, so not only were you unable to make the right decision, but you also did not remember the useful advice of others.
Parenting
- Is this your child with a tablet? Don't give him gadgets, he will grow up to be a drug addict.
- And a hat, put on a hat!
Typically, advisors give recommendations based on their experience. But in any case, there is too little of it, even if the good man raised ten of his own children, because they are all different.
Even babies are not alike. One lies calmly in a cradle, waking up only to eat. Usually their mothers like to reproach others for complaining in vain, because parenting is so simple. Another baby screams from morning to night, unless the whole family is squatting around him, including the great-niece of the dog Sharik. And the advice of parents of a calm child will not help them much.
The older the child gets, the greater the difference becomes and the less relevant other people's advice will be. And parents are even more excited about them, because every second one strives to tell them how to raise their children correctly. So giving advice here is like throwing mints into Coca-Cola: a very explosive and completely useless exercise.
How to “cool down” emotions
People who experience strong emotions find it difficult to concentrate on their problems. To help yourself, you need to let the amygdala “cool down”. The less we are personally involved in a situation, the easier it is for us to abstract ourselves from emotions and fears and reason rationally.
Scientists Ethan Kross and Igor Grossman conducted several experiments to prove their theory that if we look at a problem in the third person and become our own “best friends” who give effective advice, then it is easier for us to accept and solve the problem. In the study, participants were subjected to imaginary cheating on their partner and then asked to answer several questions (to see how subjects could detach themselves from the problem and think rationally). In the first case, they answered questions in the first person, in the second, the subjects freed themselves from their “ego” and answered in the third person, as if giving advice to a friend. The results showed that when participants took a different perspective, they gave more rational advice.
During this experiment, scientists also proved that in relation to themselves, “wisdom does not come with age”: a group of subjects aged 60–80 years were less inclined to think rationally about their problem.
When a person thinks about himself in a difficult situation, his “tunnel vision” turns on: the breadth of thinking narrows and thoughts scatter. But if a person imagines the same case in relation to another, then he abstracts from the problem and looks at it from a third person, without letting what happened pass through himself. This distance “turns off” the dramatic effect, muffles the work of the amygdala and allows you to think sensibly and wisely.
Nutrition
- You won't eat the salad? Don't you like this? Try it, it’s delicious with mayonnaise! Don't refuse, you will definitely like it!
- Stop drinking milk! It is harmful to calves and humans.
Food is a basic need and a very simple way to please yourself. So why not give a person the opportunity to calmly eat what he likes? Maybe he eats this supposedly unhealthy burger once a month, the rest of the time he eats exclusively salads with chicken breast, and the comments prevent him from enjoying it. And even more so, he has the right not to like what other people find tasty.
Finally, you should be especially careful when discussing the dangers and benefits of certain products. If reasoning is based not on research, but on Instagram posts, there is a high probability that it will spoil a person’s appetite in vain.
Other ways to detach yourself from emotions
In addition to the third-person technique, there are a number of other methods that will help you calm down, look at the state of affairs from different angles and find peace.
Zen Buddhism
advises turning on the contradiction and distraction mode. A common practice in this philosophy is to think about paradoxes, for example: “What does clapping with one hand sound like?” Pondering paradoxes helps to redirect and refresh the mind in an emergency. Contradictions help us develop our ability to tolerate uncertainty. You can get a European perspective on Zen Buddhism through Eugen Herrigel's The Art of Archery, or dive into Vietnamese Buddhism through the short book How to Eat Mindfully by Thich Nhat Hanh.
Humor
allows you to distance yourself, therefore it provides the emotional release necessary in stressful conditions. Find something funny in yourself or in the whole problem that worries you, draw a caricature of the enemy and compose a “pie” about the vicissitudes of your fate. This way you can look at everything from a different angle and free yourself from the oppressive role of the victim.
Try on different points of view
. Try to look at the conflict from the other side's point of view. Write a story from the perspective of an employer who did not pay you a salary for four months in order to support his mistress, or imagine a dialogue between your lover who cheated on you and her psychotherapist.
Breathing and physical exercises.
Physical activity helps cope with anger: it improves concentration and improves mood. Deep breathing reduces emotional arousal.
Why is it difficult for us to follow advice?
For the ability to force ourselves to do something or, conversely, to refrain from something harmful, we owe it to willpower. Self-control and self-awareness (the ability to monitor ourselves) are a wonderful pairing, thanks to which we can predict our actions, analyze the consequences and change our minds in advance.
Willpower as a product of the prefrontal cortex appeared not only due to evolution, but also due to social factors. One hundred thousand years ago, people needed to band together with others to survive. Community means cooperation and distribution of resources: a person will think many times before taking someone else’s mammoth sandwich, because this may be followed by expulsion from the tribe. And wandering alone among huge predators, diseases, and even in an inhospitable environment would most likely lead an asocial individual to death.
The more complex our social world became, the more complex our behavior was bound to become. The need to collaborate and maintain long-term relationships has impacted our brains. We began to develop self-control strategies that help us restrain our impulses and be human in the full sense of the word.
Modern man understands that his “tribe” is vital to him: it takes care of him, heals him and feeds him. Therefore, he would rather take a tight rein on himself, experience the discomfort of overpowering himself and subsume some kind of religious philosophy under it - than repeat the fate of an individual without willpower.
American neuroendocrinologist, professor of biology, neurology and neurosurgery at Stanford University Robert Sapolsky believes that the main task of the cerebral cortex of modern humans (a relatively new part of the brain) is to incline the brain to more complex decisions. When you want to smoke, it is the prefrontal cortex that “gives a yellow card” to the brain, reminding you why you quit smoking.
The interaction of different parts of the cortex largely determines whether a person will resist temptation and be able to restrain himself.
Anterior cingulate cortex
helps to cut off contradictions between current actions and global goals (watch one more episode or go to bed and get up on time the next morning).
Dorsal part
The frontomedial cortex plays the role of a cop who prevents you from making the wrong decision (for example, sitting down to play computer games instead of writing a thesis).
Sensorimotor cortex
must follow the orders of the dorsal part. If the executive body does not obey, then we can observe the “anarchist hand” syndrome: if a person with such a syndrome decides to refuse a donut at the last moment, then the uncontrolled hand will automatically drag it into the mouth.
How the language we speak affects willpower
Keith Chen (a Chinese-American economist) has suggested that grammatical constructions of the future tense in a language can influence how far away we see events that have not yet occurred. The scientist thought that in countries where the language has a separate verb form for the future, and in countries where the future and present tense are constructed in the same way in the language, they perceive time differently. In Chinese, Estonian and German, you can talk about the future using the same grammatical structures as for the present. For a Chinese it is quite natural to say something like: “In a year I learned two languages,” but for a Russian such syntax sounds unusual. Keith Chen found that people in China and Estonia, for example, perceive events that are about to happen as if they were happening right now.
Having tested his hypothesis, the scientist found that in countries where they speak languages without an expressed future tense, they are 31% more likely to save money for old age, 24% less likely to smoke, and 29% more likely to keep themselves in good physical shape. Of course, these indicators are also influenced by economic factors and many others, but the theory is interesting. Learn Chinese.
Hobbies
- Package tour to the sea? Who might be interested in this? Better go to the Amazon jungle.
- "Avengers" is for morons. Now I will send you a list of films that decent people should watch.
Tastes could not be discussed. Although, of course, this is the easiest way to feel better compared to another person - to consider yourself smarter due to the fact that you like something conditionally elite. But the recipient of the advice does exactly what he wants, and this is already worthy of admiration - not everyone can afford it.
How to withstand tests of will
Managing emotions is inextricably linked with training self-control, which can be trained with special exercises.
Become aware of the two brain systems
. Every test of willpower is a “debate” between two parts of your brain (the impulsive “hot” and the rational “cold”) - and two aspects of your personality. How do they behave when faced with emotional or sensory “temptation”? What does the impulsive side want, and what does the wise side want? You can even give them names to make it easier to personalize them.
Imagine who you will be if you follow only impulses, and then what your life will be like if there is only reason in it. Find a balance that you like and imagine it as a collaboration between the two sides.
This will allow you to compare your state at a certain moment with the desired image.
Make strong decisions in advance.
Form a strong-willed decision long before the temptation situation, when it will be difficult for you to focus. For example, pay for your gym membership in advance, pack your bag with your uniform and place it close to the door so you don’t discover in the morning that you’re already late.
Track yourself.
Check the sequence of your decisions from the most transparent (have you already chosen the days for regular jogging?) to the veiled (did you take running shoes with you on the appointed days to work, so that you don’t have to waste precious time going home later, or so that you don’t excuses appeared). This exercise will help you avoid distractions.
"Burn your bridges."
May it be difficult for you to change your decision. Cortez, in order not to retreat, sank his ships - you will also cut off an easy route to escape, leave your credit card at home and take only the amount of cash that you can spend on purchases.
Write letters to your future self
. To do this, you can use different services. Think about your future self as an existing person: what will it do and how will it evaluate the decisions you make now? Share with your future self what you are going to do to achieve your long-term goals so that when you read the letter in a year, you can evaluate your progress and analyze your mistakes.
Look at yourself today through the eyes of the future: what can you regret, and what actions will your future self thank you for?
Psychologist Hud Ersner-Hershfield says even a short writing plan can bring you closer to the future person you want to become.
Erasmus of Rotterdam once said:
“Jupiter bestowed much more passion than reason […]. He contrasted the sole power of reason with two fierce tyrants: anger and lust. To what extent reason is capable of prevailing over the combined forces of these two is clearly revealed by ordinary human life. Reason does the only thing it can do - it screams until it’s hoarse, repeating the formulas of the basic virtues, until those two tell it to get the hell out and generally behave more and more noisily and insultingly, until their Ruler gets exhausted, gives up and gives in.”
You should listen to emotions as a kind of intuitive compass. But if you learn to control their outbursts and leave time for rational processing of the situation, then you can not only give wise advice, but also follow it, which means bringing yourself closer to your ideal.
