Kayla Lee- Final Report

 Sick Souls, Healthy Minds: How William James Can Save Your Life

The Psychology of the Healthy Mind

Kaag begins this chapter by saying that James had stepped off the ledge he had been stuck on. It was now that he was regaining his footing. However, this was only partially true. As we have read previously, William James is famous for his feelings of stagnation and incompetence. So, even with him finally coming on top from his previous battles, he was walking up to a new one.

James felt that he needed to be great; if he fell short of this, he would be useless. I believe this is something many, if not all, of us can relate to. He took on one of the most rigorous projects he would with his piece, The Principles of Psychology. His job with this piece was to hold psychology to the same strict standards as the natural sciences to maintain credibility, while simultaneously fighting the reductionism that famously plagues science. Human beings are a lot more complex than, for example, the study of geology. While rocks can be sedimentary or metamorphic, it is far more complicated to restrict people to those same categorical classifications. We have a couple more thoughts than rocks. But that does not change the fact that he had to get his studies perfect.

James believed that life happened on the move. He never felt at ease when he was comfortable, which explains why he would assign himself such a loaded project. One of his first orders of business was to determine when we felt to be most alive. Unfortunately, growing older and doing more does not help us to feel more alive. He found quite the opposite. His research found that we behaved in an autopilot fashion, numbingly busying ourselves until we finally reach the end of what the day expects. This is similar to how some people can drive home every day from work and still be unable to explain their route when prompted about it. We have this survival technique to prevent ourselves from exerting all our mental capacity on mundane tasks, a survival mechanism that prevents us from tapping into our “real us.” 

This led him to the study of habit. We all have bad habits. Some of us may smoke, some of us lie, and some of us cannot get off our phones for the life of us. We all have good habits, too. It is not entirely negative. But all of us want more of the better ones. And we will go to great lengths to try to adopt them, to squash the bad and become the best versions of ourselves. When you go online, there are countless articles filled to the brim with the best-of-the-best habits you need. We are, according to James, just one big bundle of our many small habits, which we obtain through the “objective manifestations of mind.”

 James also talks about the equilibrium of habit, which is the idea that our habits are a temporary stable phase to keep us “fitting.” This is why, every single day, we sit in the same spots for this class. Interestingly, I used to have a class in this room right after this one ended. And when I first got here that first Tuesday, I was completely blinded by the sun perfectly coming in through the window. So I moved to a different seat for my next class. And then, the next time we met, I sat in the same blinding seat. I had found my place in the class, and the sun was not enough to make me move. We don’t call ourselves creatures of habit for no reason.

"Neurons that fire together wire together"
-Donald Hebb

Our neuroplasticity is what allows us to learn and grow. It does this by strengthening the bonds we nurture, and it lessens with age. This explains why children learn language better than adults can and why it is so hard to put a cigarette down. Yet still, adults learn another language all of the time, and people can quit their reliance on nicotine. Our brain is forever changing, even though the habits we nurture in our youth could very well set the stage for the rest of our lives. This is quite a scary thought, considering adolescence is famous for being a period of time highly vulnerable to influences, good or bad. It is too late to begin now. In my opinion, this is pessimistic. But I guess there is truth to this viewpoint. We can form these new habits, but we still cannot be “new.” Aspects of our former life will always live inside of us.

James concluded that we preferred self-defeating habits to any imagined danger we experienced, even when we shouldn’t. This is how we have evolved in order to protect ourselves from the gruesome conditions life throws at us. I think this point is interesting. The devil we know could be better than the devil we don’t. It could be worse, but the mere idea of trading what we are used to for something new is scary. A lot of the time, we do not want to take that chance.

The only thing that got William James through habit, this concept that should have broken him to his core with his existing feelings of helplessness, was the fact that we could change. We could take back the control these habits hold over us. Knowledge is power, and to understand is to be free. This is something that hit close to home for me. I have had a lot of struggles in my life where I felt completely overwhelmed by what my brain was telling me and feeling totally out of control and alone. One of the driving factors in my learning to cope was learning. If you can know the ins and outs of what you are dealing with, you can rationalize it and take away its power. We can guide our habits by understanding them, and we can form new routines to break our self-defeating patterns.

        Small variations to our habits can matter a great ton. James refused the world where his habits were to take hold and dictate his behaviors. He hated the “guarantee” of a simple, habitual life. Risk-taking was when he felt more alive, to solve his previous dilemma. “Be not afraid of life, for it is only in risking ourselves that we find out who we can become.”

        I am terrified of failure. I think that this is something a lot of people fear, even though, let’s be honest, it really isn’t that serious of a thing. I will even go out of my way to not do something to avoid the mere possibility of failure, which ironically often ends in failure later down the road. James lived with the mindset that failure or success, our ownership of the event was all that mattered. As long as it was our failure, there was nothing truly failed. Everything is an experience to learn and grow. Hopefully one day we can all adopt this mentality. 

Still, it would not be William James if, after all of this monumental work, he was not still lost and feeling stagnant. This led him to study emotions. How we feel is incredibly personal to us. You can say how you feel, but you can’t help another person feel it. And even in translating our emotions, we can fail to accurately describe the weight of them. Nobody but yourself can know how you feel. This can make us feel lonely since you can feel like you never entirely understand someone else. James’ view on emotions differed from the “ghost in the machine” view where they were all in our head. He believed that they were in our actions. You aren’t sulking because of the fact that you are depressed, instead you are depressed because you are sulking. Just as he established with habit, we have the power to take control of our emotions and change our view. This theory is known as the James-Lange theory. Kaag notes how clenching his teeth is a quick way to make his anger worse. I know that I can relate to this theory of biofeedback in a similar way. When I was 13, I was bullied and made incredibly insecure. I had a hard time looking at myself in the mirror and feeling anything but sorrow. So, upon reading an article about the benefits, I began to smile. Every time I was faced with my reflection, I would smile. Over time, I noticed that the sight of my face was no longer making me sad. I also noticed that I was becoming a lot more confident. And, to come back to habits, this is something I still do to this day. 

To conclude, here is a quote from the book:

“We can form habits that deliver us, almost without us realizing it, to narcissism and self-destruction. And we can form habits that teach us to to risk ourselves, to fall, and then to use our dorsal muscles to stand straight once again. The choice of which habits to actively cultivate and which emotions to feed may not be entirely up to us, but it is also not wholly beyond our control” (Kaag, 92).

Discussion Questions:

• Do you believe that you are what you do, or that you do what you are?

• How many of your habits came from someone you looked up to?

• Do you like the habits that you live by?

• Do you feel in control of your emotions, or do they control you?

Bonus:

Be like Kaag and hit those mats!

Yoga For When You're In a Bad Mood