The sunk cost fallacy

During our lives, we invest our time into lots of different things. Relationships, friendships, hobbies, jobs, learning and experiences, tend to be the key areas that absorb the majority of that time. However when it is clear that something is no longer benefitting our lives, but we have invested a large amount of time into that something, we find it difficult to depart from our current trajectory. This is the sunk cost fallacy.

There is a belief that because we’ve invested a hefty amount of time into areas such as; who we spend our time with and where we spend our time, that moving on from them would mean that time was somehow wasted. This is a misapprehension that the mind has devised, in the hope that being victim to this will some how bring us stability.

The sunk cost fallacy is a concept that could be considered the key difference between the settle and strive mentalities. Do I remain in comfort and stability, or do I advance into the unknown?

It is the belief that we make rational decisions based on the value that relationships, investments and experiences can bring us in the present and in the future.

This is a part of the web of lies that we have spun, in an attempt to convince ourselves that we are creatures of logic. Entities that are able to judge the circumstances based on their context, arrive at the most appropriate implementable measures and put those measures into effect. Not only is this not true, in most cases it’s the complete opposite.

Your mind craves equilibrium.  

In your mind, a stable equilibrium helps to harness a feeling of control and security across your life. In other words, your mind wishes to remain in homeostasis. A state where you are comfortable, confident and in control. If your mind is offered a change in circumstance that comes with drawbacks, it will be swiftly rejected. This isn’t to prevent you from adding more to your life, your mind is merely forming ways to remove the possibility for movement in the scale of stability. 

However, in your mind’s attempt to avoid imbalances, it also removes the possibility for positive growth. Here is the conundrum. This is the supernatural force that coerces a population to settle, rather than strive.

Here’s the bad news, short of becoming a human cyborg there is no way to remove emotion from our thought processes. However, what we can do is attempt to alter our mindset when presented with situations similar to those described. 

In Mark Manson’s book, Everything is f*cked, he discusses a psychological visualisation that can be used to allow your mind to chose the way it reacts to certain situations. Here is a brief overview:

Your mind is a car with two steering wheels and two sets of peddles. On one side is your thinking brain. This is the part of your mind that allows you to make rational decisions based upon the facts you have to hand. On the other side is your feeling brain. This is the part of the mind that imparts emotion into our lives. As you can see, these two parts of the mind have to coexist for someone to be both in control of their actions/decisions and well, human.

So, how does this apply to the sunk cost fallacy.

In our case, limiting the feeling brains ability to manoeuvre the vehicle will allow you to assess each case on it’s own merits/deficiencies. This isn’t about removing the feeling brains ability to contribute (again, we’re not robots), but allowing the thinking brain to assume control.

If we are able to wrestle the wheel from the hands of our feeling brain, we can begin to arrive at more rational outcomes. All that’s left after that is to put these choices into practise. 

Having the confidence to do that will not come overnight, but with consistency comes progression. We all have the ability to make these changes to our lives, we just have to implement minor alterations in the way that we think to get us there. 

Just because you’ve spent a long period of time doing something, or being with someone, doesn’t mean you have to continue. 

You may believe your time has been wasted if you give up now. 

Well, that’s all the more reason to not waste anymore of it. 

You may believe you are too emotionally invested. 

I’m sure you’ve had some great times with this partner/friend or job, but to arrive at a crossroads were you are considering a future without it, can only mean that there are undying feelings of negativity.

If you’re looking for a speech that you’re thinking will somehow force you into making the changes we’ve spoke about, I don’t have one. But I will leave you with this:

People often refer to life as this ‘journey’. A route to follow consisting of forks representing the decisions that we are faced with. I personally think it’s all a bit Disney-ish, but the underlying lessons are concrete. 

Craving equilibrium, though natural and pleasant, shortens your journey and limits your experiences, because at the end of the day, everyone’s journey ends with them lying in a box in the ground. 

Stop seeking comfort and start striving. 

“Be willing to be uncomfortable. Be comfortable being uncomfortable. It may get tough, but it's a small price to pay for living a dream.” - Peter McWilliams

You have to be selfish to be selfless

Confused already? I don’t blame you. Since an early age, we’ve been taught that being selfish is a negative trait. Now, I’m not here to say that we should strive to be impulsively selfish regardless of the consequences or circumstances. I’m suggesting that, as with the majority of other behavioural concepts, there is a grey area that we should strive to live within. In fact, not only should we be looking to exist between these two poles, we should be erring on the side of selfishness.

Negative reactions enforce negative connotations

Here’s a hypothetical scenario that will highlight why we find it so difficult to be selfish…

Your recent actions have not only affected you, but the people surrounding you. One of the members of that group takes umbrage with your choices, and reveals their distaste. It may go down like so:

“Why have you said/done that? That is so selfish.” 

How would that make you feel?

I’m guessing a number of negative emotions/thoughts would be begin to surface. These sorts of confrontations tend to lead to conclusions such as:

“Oh no. I’ve done/said something without taking into the consideration how it could effect those around me. What an awful person I am.” 

This is completely normal. You would have to be a complete narcissist to constantly ignore the gripes of those around you, especially when it was your actions that lead them to feel this way. However, reacting in this manner puts a certain expectation on that group’s ability to identify what true selfish behaviour is. This is the grey area I was talking about earlier. 

The selfishness spectrum

Now that you have a grasp on why we find it so difficult to be selfish, let’s delve into the reasoning behind people’s struggle to contextualise the actions of those around them.

The majority of concepts lie on the spectrum. Left is white, right is black with a grey area separates the two. So why when it comes to the topic of selfishness do we think in terms of black and white, instead of the vast area of grey that divides them?

As society’s need for extremist division rises, so do the illusions surrounding the life lessons that invariably impregnate our psyche. In other words, our need to slot people into categories has become so integral to the way we judge others, that people must fall into a category for the situation to be understood. This craving for identifiable viewpoints which we can use to brand one another has generated misconceptions when identifying selfishness in others (or even selflessness, for that matter).

For most of us, the first experience of this happens at a young age. We are taught from as early as we can understand, that sharing things such as; toys, food, games, etc, is the appropriate way to behave. If a child fails to grasp this concept, and acts in an improper and possibly selfish manner, it is seen as the responsibility of the parent to correct the child. This creates the most primitive of correlations in a child’s mind. Not sharing is bad, sharing is good. Or, selfishness is bad, selflessness is good.

The mind of a child would struggle to think in more detail than this, but as adults our brains should be able to delve into the complexities of a situation and judge accordingly, right?

Wrong.

Here is where the generationally recycled life lesson comes back to bite us on the proverbial arse. The concept is forced with such validity, that people are taking these beliefs into adulthood. This wouldn’t be an issue if our brain allowed us to develop these lessons by adding situational context. However, the way we think and therefore judge a situation, tends to be an outcome of the environment in which we spend our time. Meaning, if you spend all your time frantically assigning people into categories during your day-to-day life, how could you begin to add rational context to your thought process?

Try this on for size. 

Your sibling has dinner plans with their partner, but has run into trouble as their normal babysitter has cancelled due to ill health. You are asked if you can look after your siblings children for the night, whilst your sibling and their partner go out for the meal. You have prior commitments with a friend, and therefore cannot help.

If your sibling was to react without rational thought, they would deem you as selfish and uncharitable in their time of need. However applying context to the situation allows the sibling to realise that it isn’t your fault that this situation has arisen, and that you probably would have helped if you hadn’t already made plans.

This example highlights the need to alter our own mindset, rather than blaming our deficiencies on the society we have created. Adding context to situations based on the facts that we are presented with, should be something that we actively pursue. After all, this constant pigeon holing isn’t just preventing you from growing into a fully functioning adult who is able to rationalise, it is cultivating a society in which people are marginalised for being ‘different’.

The selfishness paradox

After gaining an understanding for our reasons for avoiding selfishness and our abilities to judge situations based on their nuances, we have arrived at the epicentre of the problem. The belief we have established is that selfishness is do things to benefit oneself. Whilst selfless people do things to benefit others. The truth is slightly different. 

To be truly selfless you must possess the capabilities to be able to have a positive impact on a person’s life. These capabilities will include things like; energy, experience and positivity itself. For example, if someone is struggling to be consistently positive, it is unlikely that a downbeat relative would be of any assistance.

As I spoke about on a previous post, relieving your mind of it’s own issues is paramount to a clear and positive mindset (an essential aspect of selflessness). The byproducts of this mindset (knowledge, experience and time), provide you with a foundation to be able to help those around you to the best of your ability. Meaning not only is putting your needs before others going to help YOU in the long run, it will allow you to be in a position to help OTHERS. 

If you are your number one priority in life, the people directly surrounding you will feel the benefits from that. This comes as a consequence of your happiness. If you are happy, positive and able to help, you will find that the attitudes of the people surrounding you will follow suit. 

The majority of people follow the example set by others, especially when it seems like that person has got their shit together. This kind of person (successful, mentally and physically healthy, fun to be around and most importantly happy) will have made choices in their life that society would deem ‘selfish’. This is exactly why selfishness isn’t inherently a negative trait to hold. In fact it’s possibly the most integral trait one could hold.

Your success is predicated on your ability to be selfish in key moments. Your happiness is dependent on how you find the answers to your own problems and needs before assisting others. You can’t be happy without being selfish, and you can’t be selfless without being selfish. 

So, the next time your actions are deemed to be selfish, ask yourself:

• Does this person understand that putting myself first will invariably allow me to help others?
• Is this person applying context to the situation and judging my actions accordingly?

If both or either of these questions result in a no, I wouldn’t waste your time worrying about the outcome. To be selfish is a positive step toward being exactly the type of person you want to be, you just have to take it. After all, as you’ve continuously heard from flight attendants all around the world;

"Only when you have secured your own mask, should you attend to children or other passengers.”

You do you

We’ve all heard this before, right? Mostly from Fiat 500 driving, self empowered young women on the majority of social media platforms. It tends to be hollered as a form of superficial quip, gesticulating support for a close friend’s actions or decisions. But let’s side step that particular landmine for now, and focus on the words themselves.

You do you. It could be taken a number of ways. 

To concentrate on ones own progress, instead of the progress of others?

To look after your self interests because if you don’t, who will?

To promote self worth in an otherwise under appreciated individual?

I’m sure there’s plenty of other meanings, but we’re going to stick to one in particular.

Concentrate on solving your own issues, not the issues of others

Have you ever done something just to please someone else? I don’t mean offering to take the bins out, or buying a gift for your better half. I mean dropping all of your wants, all of your needs, all of your desires, just to make someone else happy? I’m guessing the majority of you have (even if it was just the once). Let’s visit that feeling for a second. 

How did it go for you? 

Did you get pleasure out of it? 

Did it make your life better?

Fuck, did it even make that person happy? 

At best, it may have brought that person a short-lived feeling of gratitude or relief that they no longer had to face this particular problem. Do you know why this is short lived, and can even sometimes feel under appreciated? 

It’s because you dropping everything you believe in to please someone else, not only doesn’t make any sense to you (now that you’re sat there thinking about it), but it doesn’t make any sense to the person you’re doing it for either. 

Allow me to explain.

Creatures who crave problem solving

Here I’m going to lay the groundwork for the processes that one can go through when attempting to take responsibility for the actions/decisions of others - especially in terms of problem solving. 

Example: You get some flatpack coffee table/sideboard bullshit from Ikea. What’s the first thing you do, when all the pieces are laid out in front of you? You throw the instructions to the side, and have a crack at putting it together. Sure, following the instructions of how to build this particular Swedish jigsaw would save you time, and make your life a whole lot easier. Still, it’s just not the same, is it?

Let’s relate this to something a little closer to home than Scandinavian furniture. You come across a problem in your personal life. Perhaps it feels like your boss is singling you out for criticism. Perhaps your best friend has bailed on some plans that you were really looking forward to. Perhaps, despite studying relatively hard, you still failed a recent exam. What is the first thing you do when confronted with these or similar issues? 

Whether it is conscious or not, your mind will attempt to solve the riddle, and come to a conclusion on what the next course of action should be. 

Side note : Not all people are like this. Some may cast aside any responsibility for their problems as soon as they encounter them. People you and I would refer to as, narcissists. We’ve all met them. Those people who believe themselves to be above the inconveniences of the rest of the world. People who proceed to funnel all of their problems downstream, for someone with less self-privilege to fix. Although this post isn’t about narcissists, I will say this:

Identify and remove these people from your life. No explanations, no apologies. 

These people are happiness vacuums, ready to suffocate everyone they come into contact with, 

and should be avoided without exception.   

But, let’s assume for now that we’re not narcissistic in nature, and possess the natural urge to fix our own problems. 

What happens when our mind comes back empty? If you can’t ‘do you’, what is the solution? 

You may ask a close friend or relative for their assistance. You may seek out answers from your preferred search engine. You may even throw caution to the wind, and write in to one of the many ‘help me, my life is fucked’ columns in your chosen tabloid newspaper/magazine. There are correlations with these reactions, but what is it?

Despite the fact that you’re asking for a helping hand, you are NOT asking for your problems to be fixed for you. You still want to ‘do you’, but now require a small amount of assistance. 

This is the part where the respondent (henceforth known as the facilitator) has a decision to make. They either attempt to guide you (the troubled) onto the path they may have chosen, therefore narrowing your options in terms of appropriate actions to rectify your issue. Or, they fix the problem for you. 

When choosing the latter, a never ending cycle of relationship DIY begins. The facilitator feels the urge to service the troubled in a bid to alter their happiness. I call this, ‘The Hero Effect’. This effect provides the foundation for the majority of unhealthy relationships, and is a key driver toward the amount of progress an individual will make. In other words;

How can ‘you do you’ when you are expending all of your energy on the problems of others, and how can they do them when you are relieving them of that responsibility. 

The Hero Effect

A feeling of satisfaction that an individual achieves by solving the problems/issues of someone close to them.

The Hero Effect is detrimental for a number of reasons:

1. The facilitator is failing to allow the troubled to satisfy their urge to problem solve. This will cause the troubled to feel unconsciously dissatisfied.

2. Whilst enabling the needs of the troubled, the facilitator’s issues will go unsolved. This will result in a negative headspace for the facilitator, forcing him/her to look for an escape from that negativity.

3. Upon resolving the issue offered up by the troubled, the facilitator will feel short term satisfaction. This will trigger a recycling of past behaviours in a bid to relive that fleeting feeling. Not only does this continue the facilitator’s cycle of distraction, it also provides the escape from their self-constructed cell of negativity.

4. Over a period of time, the facilitator’s plights will reach capacity. Not only will the action required to begin solving their issues feel monumental, but they will most likely be on the brink of clinical depression. This forces the facilitator further into the distraction cycle, in the hope that contributing to someone else’s happiness will fulfil their own.

As you can see, ‘You do you’ is an extremely difficult motto to live by when you expend all of your time, effort and energy on the problems of another. But not only that, the word cycle infers exactly the reason why these behaviours lead to clinical depression - it’s continuous.

Scenario

Boy gets mad because he has a problem.

Girl feels responsible for the happiness of the boy.

Girl then goes out of her way to fix the problem for the boy.

Girl fixes the problem and feels relieved that the boy is now ‘happy’. 

Boy comes across next problem.

Repeat.

That’s the elephant in the room when it comes to this particular behavioural flaw. The fact that you’re putting someone else’s happiness before your own is merely the tip of the iceberg. The submerged-portion is that once you solve/fix/remove that first problem, you’re already staring into the eyes of the next.

In his book ‘The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life’, author Mark Manson states:

"Life is essentially an endless series of problems. The solution to one problem is merely the creation of another."

So not only are you spiralling into a pit of misery - feeling like your life and aspirations are going down the tube - but the person who’s happiness you put before your own is producing problems on mass. This results in you working 24 hour shifts in their factory of meaningless servitude, hoping you’ll be able to put food (the endorphins transmitted through satisfaction) on the table (the neurons in which the endorphins are transmitted). 

Help me, my life is fucked

Now that you’ve got your head around the crux of the matter, you may begin to ask - I want to do me, but how do I break the cycle?

Scenario

Girl has a problem.

Boy enquires how he can help.

Girl explains her problem.

Boys listens, empathises, and offers solutions that the girl could put into action.

Girl chooses one of the options to fix her problem (or goes in a different direction entirely).

Girl eventually overcomes, solves or moves past her problem.

In this instance, the boy has aided the girl without the need to fix the problem himself. Leaving both parties satisfied with the outcome. 

This method may seem awkward at first, especially if you attempt to implement it into a relationship where the status quo has already been established. But you will not continue to grow by incessantly fixing the problems of others. In fact, your emotions will bounce from fleeting satisfaction to self loathing like clockwork. 

Not only will anxiety become your base emotion, it will become your identity. People who get shit done on a daily basis, were not born with that trait already instilled in their personality. It was conceived there through consistent behaviours contributing to that end. 

A person who eats well and exercises regularly was not born with this already programmed into their psyche. It took long term periods of committed action and endurance to implement those base behaviours. This then allows that person to see this as part of themselves, as part of their make up, as part of their identity. 

They did them, now you need to do you, without apology. Create your identity, establish your behaviours, be selfish. Because, as you’ll see in a future post, selfishness and selflessness are more alike than you think. 

Establishing goals and creating a positive routine

Disclaimer: Before I start, I’d like to make the purpose/intention of this and future posts clear. I am not in any way a mental health professional. Nor do I claim to be an expert in the area. There are millions of people who have fallen on much harder times than myself, and I am aware that the discoveries I have made, could be rendered almost useless by that fact. I wouldn’t say that these ruminations have a ‘target audience’, I’m just hoping that someone can find solace in the words that follow. 

The past twelve months were definitely the toughest of my life. The four day window following my 26th birthday, turned my world upside down. Lonely attempts to gather broken pieces of my previous self became unthinkable. I was forced to reach out. That was my first step. My first step toward discovering who I am, and what I want. Since that first action was taken I have continued to learn something everyday, culminating in what you are about to read. I don’t know how helpful these may be for others, but I guess we’ll find out...

Everyone has some kind of routine right? I know I did. Some might call this a rut, which is exactly what I was in. I thought that happiness was being able to sink down into the couch at the earliest opportunity. Lazy, uninspired, lacking direction and overall miserable - without ever realising it. I had myself convinced, that I was happy to live this way for the rest of my life. The human mind is the world’s greatest illusionist.

A typical day:

6:00am - Drag myself out of bed and clamber into my work uniform.

6:30am - Drive with hundreds of other miserable commuters, hoping to arrive in time for work. 

8:00am - Start work, in a job where I sought out as little human interaction as possible.

4:00pm - Haul arse home.

4:30-4:45pm - Arrive home and force a half-arsed clean of my house.

5:30pm - Shower, sit down and convince myself that a third takeaway in as many days would be a good idea (as long as I didn’t have to answer the door).

That was it. My life boiled down to 6 bullet points. I thought this was happiness - seriously. The one positive thing about my life, now that I can view it in the cold light of day, was that I had someone in it who cared about me, because I definitely didn’t care about myself. 

So far, this wouldn’t be a glowing endorsement in terms of establishing a routine, would it? I’m merely letting you peek behind the curtain of where a routine without direction will take you. However, a routine with structure, goals, rewards and progression? I’m struggling to put into words how much of an effect it has had on my life. 

I happened across the idea of finding something to focus on. Ever since I could remember, negative thoughts had plagued my conscious about my weight. Sometimes fleeting, other times lingering. I had almost come to accept their permanent tenure within my mindset, but the events that proceeded this sudden departure from normality (the details of which I will spare you for now) had taken me to a place that I had not frequented before. 

My goal was set, time to assemble a structured process. I changed what I could, with the work portion of my day being the major obstacle. It wasn’t that I hated my job or where I worked, but continually found myself isolated. Struggling to keep my ever active mind from wondering. Financial constraints dictated that this wasn’t an optimal time for a change of employment and although the hours I spent at work began to feel like someone had hit the pause on my progress, I wasn’t about to let that stop me.

In an attempt to gain an understanding of something that had evaded me for 26 years, I devoted every spare second of my day to research. I wanted to maximise the amount of fat I could lose, in the least time possible. Yeah sure, I could’ve just paid some jumped-up, caffeine induced, part time fitness div from the gram to send me a meal plan and stick to it, but I wanted to take control (another thing we’ll speak about in later posts). I mean, who wants to be told what they can and can’t eat anyway?

So after learning the basics of nutrition and fitness, I began turning words on a screen into the foundation of my week. Meal prep Sundays, a 4 day gym routine and continued education, became the three pillars of my day-to-day existence. Some of you might think this is kind of sad, but I enjoyed it. It was occupying my time, I felt like I had gained a small amount of control over something that I had previously struggled with. When I look back now, committing to these habits was another step closer to gaining an understanding of who I was. I don’t mean, “Oh look, I like fitness and nutrition”. I mean how much I enjoyed learning, how much I craved control, how much I required structure to thrive.

Months went by, kgs dropped off and habits continued, until one day everyone seemed to notice all at once. I was inundated with; compliments, surprised looks, pats on the back and screams of ‘where’s the rest of you?’. I found it difficult to know what to say when people asked me how I’d done it. Do I simplify it? and say that I just stopped eating as much. Or do I tell them what I actually did? 

Accomplishing what I had set out to do was the final outcome, but the changes that took place during the process allowed me to appreciate just how important establishing that routine was. It wasn’t just fat loss, I was altering my personality. I was becoming active, motivated and better educated. I wanted to talk to people again, not just because my mood had improved, but because my anxiety when subjected to social situations had lessened.

With my make up altered and my first goal complete, I set a new one. What it was isn’t important, but the principle is. If you’ve nothing to aim for you can never fail, and as I’ll explain in a later post, failure is the most important element of success. So, set your goals; big, little, long term, short term, it doesn’t matter - set them. I have changed, altered and adapted my routine so many times that it is barely recognisable. Some of my goals are now almost unachievable, but they don’t have to be. Improvement, that’s the aim. Self improvement allows you to become a better version of yourself, to overcome and adapt to ever changing circumstances. To be the version of yourself that YOU want to be, as often as possible.

Just to clarify, this isn’t me saying you should stick to a routine, no matter the circumstances, otherwise you’ll never truly be happy - far from it. I’m suggesting that if you make a conscious effort to implement positive habits that cater to your aspirations whenever possible, you will see improvements. No matter how little.

Those who attempt to implement this life lesson may develop some questions quite quickly. Is it meant to be this hard? Did you ever have a day that felt like you made next to no progress at all? How did you deal with the nagging feeling that you weren’t getting anywhere?

Although my previous words may have indicated a relative ease in the completion of this objective, I won’t sit here and pretend that it was smooth sailing during the process - that would be a lie. In fact, I spent a large majority of it down trodden and self critical. 

Not only did I have days where I felt like I was making no progress, I even had days where I felt that I had regressed. Before my head hit the pillow every night, I spent a few moments critiquing my day. Cycling through every unit of measure one could conjure, before delivering the final verdict. Pass or fail. I believe this to be the point that separates the ones who could, from the ones who will. Dreaming up something that would be ‘nice to get one day’, may see you fall at the first hurdle, but deciding on an outcome that evokes feelings of desire and purpose will force you through those hurdles. This is not because you were ‘destined’ to reach your goal, it is because you HAD to reach your goal. Determination isn’t something that is gifted to a select few. It is a quality born from purpose and motive. 

What’s yours?

A quick introduction

I recently went through the most transformative year of my life. I've had to deal with emotions I never knew existed, ask myself questions I didn't know the answer to and confront issues I never knew I had. Looking back on the past 12 months, has made me realise a few things:

1. Just because you think you're happy, doesn't mean you are.

2. Just because you think you're right, doesn't mean you are.

3. Just because you think you know yourself, doesn't mean you do.

Three vague sentences that mean very little without context, but we'll get to that. 

On day 366 I started to jot a few things down, mostly relating to philosophical life lessons the 'mentally healthy' implement every day (whether consciously or not). Jotting turned to scrawling, which turned to ranting and before I knew it, I had been going on with myself for what seemed like forever. To make sense of it all I edited, altered and structured my deranged ramblings into what you are about to read. So without further ado, here's my first self-published series surrounding mental health and mindset.

Knowing yourself: A year of learning