... then there's the example of rats, which I love. This is Jaak Panksepp's work.
He wrote a book called "Affective Neuroscience", which I would
HIGHLY, highly recommend. I have a list of readings recommended readings on my
website. It's a brilliant book. And he's a brilliant psychologist. Really one of the
top, top psychologists as far as I'm concerned, both theoretically and
experimentally; a real genius. He's the guy who discovered that rats laugh
when you tickle them. They laugh ultrasonically. So you can't actually
hear them. But, if you record it and slow it down then you can hear them giggling away
when you tickle them with an eraser, which is sort of like their mother's tongue.
It's often what lab people use as a substitute for the licking of the
little rat by the mother. So, and he discovered the play circuit in mammals,
which is like a major deal, right. He should get a Nobel Prize for that.
That's a big deal to discover an entire motivational circuit whose existence
no one had really predicted, you know, apart from the fact that, obviously, mammals play
and even lizards, maybe. Some of the more social lizards seem to play.
You know. So, anyhow. But, Panksepp observed - I think this is a brilliant piece of science,
is that, first of all, juvenile male rats, in particular, like to
rough-and-tumble play. They like to wrestle. And they actually pin each other
just like little kids do or like adult wrestlers do. They pin their shoulders down.
And that basically means you win. And so, ok. So that's pretty cool.
But what's even cooler, I think - well there's three things: One is the rats will work
for an opportunity to get into an arena where they know that play might occur.
And so, that's one of the scientific ways of testing an animal's motivation, right.
So imagine you have a starving rat and it knows that it's got food down the end of
a corridor. You can put a little spring on its tail and measure how hard
it pulls and that gives you an indication of its motivational force.
Now imagine the starving rat that's trying to get to some food, and you have a
little spring on his tail, and you waft in some cat odor ... So now that rat is
starving AND wants to get out of there He's going to try to pull even farther
towards the food. So getting away plus getting forward are separate
motivational systems. And if you can add them together it's real potent. And part of the reason
why in the future authoring exercise that you guys are
going to do as the class progresses you're asked to
outline the place you'd like to end up, which is your desired future, and also
the place that you could end up if you let everything fall apart, is so that
your anxiety chases you and your approach systems pull you forward.
You're maximally motivated then. And it's important because otherwise you can be
afraid of pursuing the things that you want to to pursue. Right? And that's very
common. And so then the fear inhibits you, as the promise pulls you forward. But it
makes you weak because you're afraid. You want to get your fear behind you, pushing you.
And so, what you want to be afraid ... MORE afraid of NOT pursuing your goals
than you are of pursuing them. It's very, very helpful. And lots of times in life
and this is something really worth knowing, you know. And this is one of the
advantages to being an autonomous adult ... is: You don't get to pick the best thing.
You get to pick your poison. You have two bad choices. And you get to pick which one
you're willing to suffer through. And every choice has a bit of that element in it.
And so, if you know that, it's really freeing. Because otherwise you
torture yourself by thinking, "Well, maybe there's a good solution to this", you know,
compared to the bad solution. It's like, no, no. Sometimes there's just risky
solution one and risky solution two. And sometimes both of them are really bad.
But you at least get to pick which one you're willing to suffer through.
And that's ... That actually makes quite a bit of difference. Because you're also facing it
voluntarily then. Instead of it chasing you. And that is an entire different ...
entirely different psycho-physiological response: Challenge versus
threat. It's not the same, even if the magnitude of the problem is the same.
And so, putting yourself in a challenging, let's call it "mind frame", you can't just do that
by magic. Putting yourself in a challenging mind frame is much better
much easier on you psycho-physiologically because you don't produce ... you don't go into
the generalized stress response to the same degree. And you're activating
your exploratory and seeking systems, which are dopaminergically mediated,
and that involve positive emotion. So, if you CAN face something voluntarily, rather
than having it chase you, it's way better for you psycho-physiologically. So, that's
partly why ... Well it's worthwhile to go find the
dragon in its lair, instead of waiting for it to come and eat you.
So, especially when you also add the idea that if you go find the dragon
in its lair you might find it when it's a baby, instead of a full-fledged bloody
monster that is definitely going to take you down.
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