Not the detachment I was looking for

The story thus far is reflected in three of my posts. I referred to the Marshmallow Mind late last year in Marshmellowing – how I have been optimising my life and decisions for optionality. Placing myself such that circumstance/environment doesn’t cause a decision I’ll regret. Identifying with the ‘Ozark’ credo that “People make choices. Choices have consequences.” I still do, but I also see secondary consequences, and this post is about those.

Identity

As I wrote in Marshmellowing: The Prequel, my marshmallow mind is the result of ‘responsibility’ winning. It comes with costs. The marshmallow mind continues to plan the future and make predictions. That creates and reinforces an identity and a bunch of problems.

As the original Marshmallow post points out, the Marshmallow Mind tricks us into believing that the rewards for delayed gratification compound forever. They don’t. Eventually, they turn into a trap whose escape requires a radical break with our old identity. As Buffett put it, “the chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.” And thus the secondary consequence is that the identity creates its own rituals and obligations, to the extent that letting go of it becomes very hard. And without letting go, one cannot become the desired self.

Health

In Marshmellowing: The Prequel, I also referred to the phenomenally good podcast on Hidden Brain, in which Lisa Feldman Barrett talks about how the brain can get trapped in its own predictions. When the predictions don’t work out, the result is stress.

But that’s only one half of it. Cat Bohannon in Eve explains what this looks like physically: people under chronic stress wake up with elevated cortisol levels. Too much, and too frequent, vigilance. Over time, this overactive stress response starts affecting memory, slows down cognitive processing, and people tend to develop emotional and perceptive detachment. The body adapts by becoming numb to its own signals.

I don’t face daily threats. But I do chase favorable outcomes with such intensity that my mind treats harmless situations as threats. It stays in a constant state of readiness. And as Bohannon points out, over time, that vigilance is life-threatening. Another secondary consequence I didn’t account for.

Relationships

A lot of my decisions have an element of delayed gratification. Wealth is a classic example of delayed gratification that pays off. Relationships are not. 

I used to be wary of relationships at large because humans are complex. I have been scarred by people taking advantage of my being generous. I had also assumed that when I have reached ‘success’ as I defined it, people would be ‘available’. But I realise the secondary consequence here is negative compounding because I had ignored them for too long. The world doesn’t work by my clock.

What I am trying to do

Now that I know of these, here’s what I am trying to do. First, systematically dismantle the part of my identity that has served its purpose. In practical terms this means a few things. One, stop thinking of every little thing ten steps in advance, reserve that for things whose outcomes are really important. Two, in continuation, stop optimising for set outcomes in daily life, enjoy the happiness in the process of doing things. Find those things. Ironic that this is something I have already done in the context of this blog. ChatGPT also recommended to journal about things whose disastrous outcomes I had envisioned, and nothing really happened. 😀

The consequences I hope for from all this is also in health and relationships. That it will start reducing my vigilant state, and reduce my LDL. That I will stop over analysing people’s intent, and spend more time with folks with whom I can be myself, flaws and all. I already do, but I don’t nearly spend time enough. I am rectifying that.

I’m still drawn to optionality. It feels like freedom. But I’ve also started asking: at what cost? Sometimes, the cost is paid in connection. Sometimes, in feeling. And sometimes, in becoming a stranger to my own present. When vigilance becomes my resting state, I forget how it feels to simply be. That is not the detachment I was looking for!