“When do you think this will end man?”

You know how some events and concepts feel like a ‘universal truth‘? For example, we now arguably have a new universal truth i.e. “2020 sucks”.

But at the risk of sounding dramatic, I wonder: Have we built an impending sense of doom as part of the new normal?

The New Normal

Humans are funny. We started this pandemic out with an incredible craze of finding new ways to connect. Eventually, that craze faded. We got accustomed to the new routine and we ran out of things to talk about. Partly because we could not constantly converse about every piece of terrible information all around us.

Humans are also more informed now than ever before. So when our physical reality becomes unclear, other people become a major source of information. Social influence, whether intentional or not, can have a major effect on a person’s behaviour.

That is why, I think the conversations we have with our friends and family, probably became grim because nobody has the information you need. As a consequence, you only end up talking about the information you do have, which can be redundant.

Our species tends to rely on external cues for describing our emotional states. For example, we look at the time to determine if we want to eat.

This is part of the two-factor theory of emotion. Simply put, when our brains do not know why it feels an emotion, it relies on external stimulation for cues on how to label/validate the emotion.

The good news is that this theory is majorly contradicted and has not held as full-proof in all situations. Not ALL our emotions are stimulated by the outside environment. This gives us major hope, because that is one of the ways for us to cope.

Talk To Yourself

Have you ever said something or believed in something without really knowing why? For example, in a conversation with a friend about hunting, I said, “I believe hunting is a bad activity and I don’t understand why people still do it“.

But in reality, I have never previously discussed/read/experienced anything about the activity of hunting. As soon as I said that I believe hunting is a bad activity, I started looking for educational arguments to back my statement but nothing truly justified it.

So I went home and I tried to figure out why do I actually believe that hunting is a bad activity before thoroughly researching on the topic. Based on my limited knowledge, I made the following list:

Reasons why I don’t support hunting:

• Bad for the environment
• Humans can probably survive without it
• Hunting accidents can be avoided

My physical reality:

• I consume meat occasionally
• I probably damage the environment in more ways than one

After I made the above list, I realised, I don’t actually know enough to believe anything. To summarise, I argued with myself and it was humbling.

Elliot Aronson (author of the book “The Social Animal” – highly recommend it, there is free pdf available online) puts it best – he says that as long as we know why we came to believe some things, we will always feel free to change our beliefs. But if we simply believe something is true without knowing the why, we will cling to such beliefs even when we are contradicted.

I think this applies to emotions as well. Ask yourself, why are you feeling a certain way. Understand what you’re feeling about anything before you staunchly state it to anybody else. It is important now more than ever, because we all are influencing each other massively. This applies even when you share a post online.

How I Cope

_{^{(or how I think I cope but maybe I am just fooling myself, I don’t know yet)}}

Keeping the above in mind and now circling back to the reality of 2020. Many of my friends (by many I mean 2) asked me to try to write about this topic a while ago. Because our conversations were getting murkier by the minute. But I did not have a single clue on how to cope because my mental health had gone to the dogs.

Then I read up on the concept of ‘Self-Persuasion‘. It basically means that a person takes an active role in persuading herself/himself to change their attitude/behaviour. But how do we actively end up doing this?

Social psychological research shows that when we try to persuade others, we inadvertently persuade ourselves on the topic.

Back in the 1950s, researchers were testing this theory and trying to figure out how best to change people’s minds, particularly, on smoking cigarettes. In this attempt, they asked smokers to role-play and convince someone else to quit smoking. The results concluded that when the smokers themselves generated the anti-smoking arguments, they were more opposed to smoking afterwards.

What I am trying to say is this – any actual motivation to change your emotional state / belief / attitude, will only come from within. And what you’re putting out in the world, is what you’re accepting. (Disclaimer: This is NOT me saying “spread good vibes and get good vibes“. )

I mean we should try to have better conversations – first with ourselves and then with others.

For example, I try to cope by recording a weekly video of myself reviewing my week and also daily meditation is helping massively (something I already preached about in my previous blogs). Some people also write and journal, which is also great, whatever works best for you. I am actively also trying to involve myself in well-thought out conversations with my peers and focussing on limited information at a time.

Terrible things will keep happening because mankind exists and the suffering will keep happening because mankind can survive.