codeandcanvas:

codeandcanvas:

A desire to have other conversations than

• saying what is bad about a thing
• saying how a thing makes me feel

I carry around this image of a monkey responding to stimuli, and I am sick of it. Having studied graphic design also meant having studied marketing, and psychology of perception.

But it also meant having studied media, and science of communication, too.

Starting a new kind of conversation today. I refuse to name it, I refuse to describe it. I refuse to use these same two modes of conversation I mentioned, because I donʼt think they are conversations at all (may Schulz von Thunʼs students and the other adherents to other simplifications forgive me, I canʼt believe that a model always applies).

I expect to get myself into immense trouble.

Still relevant.

And I did get myself into quite a bit of trouble, after all.

You see, there are loops everywhere, mostly in people, and when the loops get noticed, these sentences can be said or heard, depending on who you are:

“I remember you saying that,” or

“You’ve said that before.”

So, instead of being annoyed, I want to propose something else: to see these loops as something parts of our minds are made up of.

If you are like me, you of course want to escape the loops. I don’t want to keep repeating myself to other people, so when, for instance, I think I’m being insightful, or especially when I think I’m solving some age‑old problem, what I am actually doing is being in a loop.

A very slow, very slowly progressing loop. If you’d ask me, I would never know that I was repeating myself.

But I was, and I am.

So, how to get out of this loop?

Let’s assume that there is a problem in your life, one which does not bear you down in the present, but which exists in your mind as a memory. Let’s assume that you keep thinking about it, returning to it, pardon my sarcasm here, because now you have some fresh new idea about how to tackle this thing, this memory, and surely this time you will solve it.

Surely this time, you will remember to get out of the loop.

Surely this time, I’ll remember to not repeat myself.

But that is the issue: this is the loop. The issue is the loop itself. There is no way to get out of the loop by being looped in.

The way I see it, the problem can not be solved by thinking about it. And because we keep thinking about it, this thinking becomes a habit.

What that means, is that if we return to my assumption that there is a problem in your life, one which does not bear you down in the present as in it’s not happening to you right now, then thinking about it is the issue. It really isn’t about the theme or the content of these loops: the loops, I think, get filled with whatever you’ve experienced in your life before or are afraid of happening to you.

In my own words, I think that these loops are where thoughts end, it is how thinking fails. Because instead of realizing that we are still inside our own thoughts, we seem to expect to be able to transcend our own thoughts, our own brains.

And as sure as our skulls curve around our brains, our thoughts curve back, because in order to solve a problem, we need to look at it from outside the problem.

So instead of solving the problem, solve the loop. Take notice that you ruminate, not about what. The content really is not the issue at all. Sure, it can and does drag you in, like a book, or a film, but don’t assume that this time, you’ll come up with a genius solution while inside the loop. All we do is make the metaphorical grooves of the loop grow deeper, make them take up more space in our minds.

Instead, never enter the loop at all. Change your life. Be free.

I know I try.

Source: My after‑hours blog on Tumblr Code & Canvas