How Tarot cards and vacations make us happy

I remember a Friday in college, when I noticed one of my dormmates wandering around depressed. "What's going on?" I asked her. "I don't know," she replied and left it at that. I had a sneaking suspicion it had to do with her and her best friend competing for my roommate, something I was uniquely privy to. Before I could confirm that with her, she disappeared for two days.

On Sunday, she popped up out of nowhere. "Where the hell were you?" I asked. "I just went out to the beach," she replied. "Are you still depressed?" I asked. "Nope, I figured some stuff out, and now I'm good." She then turned around and left.

This cryptic exchange has always stood out in my head. I think because I was going through my own depressions at the time. I was confused how she could liberate herself in just two days, when I felt like I was doing the right thing by staring out the window dwelling on my problems for hours on end. I couldn't explain why she could be depressed on Friday, and not depressed on Sunday simply by "getting space" and "figuring it out." What did she figure out?

But now, I think I'm closer to understanding the mechanics of how this kind of liberation happens. And I think it has something to do with what I learned from Tarot.

I first got into Tarot a year ago, when my friend Rusty gave me a reading. My question for him was, "What do I have to do to achieve more work-life fulfillment." He laid out the cards, walked me through the meanings, asking me questions about this or that, and I found my mind breaking through barriers, and focusing in on certain things that were really powerful for me. Around that time, the iPhone App Store was about to launch, and I was wavering between trying to make my own stake as an independent developer, or continuing being an unhappy freelancer. The cards and the readings just kept whispering to me to pursue my dreams, to do something that scared me. For me, this meant creating my own ideas, rather than working on other people's. And this was even before the App Store opened.

While the conclusion of this story is that I decided to make an iPhone app for Tarot—which turned out to be a hit—the real story is that for two months after that reading, I felt charged with a renewed sense of purpose in work, something that had previously been a rare experience for me since 1998. And I knew I could credit Tarot for doing this, that somehow it had triggered life-change in me.

And here's how I explain that transformation. Our consciousness is like a fisherman on a lake. We spend most of the time gliding around the surface, looking for answers to our problems. But we often never really find them until we stop, make a guess that there's something deep down there, and cast our line to grab them.

In a Tarot reading, the cards branch out all over the place in your mind, triggering associations beneath the surface that you may have never considered for years. It then drops hints at you that here, right here, is where you might want to cast your line. Tarot is called a divination tool, which reminds me of those divining rods that people used to carry that would pull them to an obscure source of water.

I think that taking a vacation does the same thing. It removes you from the currents and eddies running through your life, and allows you to take a casual scan of your entire lake.

Or to put it in engineering terms, only when all the noise in your life is quiet, does the signal finally emerge.

All in all, I've summarized this idea into two principles that relate to each other:

How can you be happy if you don't proceed in the direction of your most important wants/needs/values?
And then this one:
Introspective devices, like soul-searching, give quiet, but important voices a platform.
I believe that it is absolutely essential to our happiness to find within ourselves the ignored and marginalized voices that are whispering to us every day about our dreams and aspirations. Those voices need to be recognized and given a megaphone. Whether you take a vacation, get a Tarot reading, or meditate, somehow you must clear everything standing in the way of what you genuinely want in life. The blockers could be anything, from fear, to distractions, to being set in your ways, or discouragement from others. Whatever it is, we must have the courage to plumb the depths of our souls to find what it is that we truly want.

Ten 10-min. Relaxation Videos

I put together a playlist of Ten 10-min. or longer relaxation videos from YouTube. Turn on, tune in, drop out.

How do you stop the endless chatter in your mind?

My ideas on how to quiet the mind revolve around this principle:

The mind is an echo chamber.

Any thought you have repeats itself at varying decibel levels. If you're paying attention to your thinking, then your recognition of that thought becomes another thought. If you try to stop your thinking, then that command will carry with it the target thought, further amplifying the echo. For example, George Lakoff in Don't Think of an Elephant, suggests that Nixon shouldn't have said, "I'm not a crook" because it immediately puts the idea of "crook" in people's heads.

This all makes quieting your mind difficult. You can try willful thought-stopping, but you will notice your brain get sore, and in some cases, often the target thought will become stronger. In White Bears and Other Unwanted Thoughts, Daniel Wegner discusses a study showing that the target thought to suppress almost always gets stronger after an active attempt to suppress it. It's like trying to yell "quiet!" in a library.

I have a method that addresses this. It's called a "net reduction in repetitive thoughts." What you do is alternate between these two methods:

1. Active thought-suppression
2. Letting yourself have the thought

If you push too much on the first method, you'll just amplify the thought. If you focus too much on the second method you're obsessing. Both methods do cause at least a momentary increase in the thought, but if played right, as a pair, they eventually lead to a net loss of the thought. For example, if you let your mind flow freely and express all the negative thoughts of the day, it will be like airing out the pressure. Or, if you have a mind that's running out of control, and you tell yourself briefly, "I don't like these thoughts," that may put a kink in the thought-train and discourage negativity. Either way, you want to ultimately end up with less repetitive thoughts, or a "net" reduction.

Controlling your thoughts is essential to happiness. Wegner further shows studies correlating depression and a weakened ability to control negative ideation.

So remember this: Sometimes you need to let your mind run out of steam on its own. Other times you need to intervene and gently say halt. Move appropriately between the two, and you'll have a quieter mind.

6 Seconds To Relax

I love this tip from Zen Habits: 6 Seconds to Relax. Any time you need to relax, just do a two-second inhale, and a four-second exhale. Examples:

B: If you’re a Blogger, take a breath each time you click “save” when writing an article for your blog.
R: If you make Reservations for an airline, take a breath each time you book a flight going east.
E: If you’re an Engineer, take a breath each time you use your calculator.
A: If you’re an Accountant, take a breath each time you see a number ending in 6.
T: If you’re a Teacher, take a breath each time the school bell rings.
H: If you’re a Highway tollbooth operator, take a breath each time a white car comes through your lane.
E: If you’re an Editor, take a breath each time you correct a comma.

Breathing is so crucial to mindfulness techniques. For most people, their natural breath in shallow and weak. Imagine if it was 20-40% deeper every time, what kind of global impact that would have on your well-being?

Further Reading:

A Stillness Movement

Maybe what we need is a Stillness Movement. The goal of this, as opposed to mindfulness, is to simply do nothing. Don't meditate, don't use your computer, don't try to clear your mind, don't talk to anybody, don't do any work, just be. You'll probably be sitting, maybe lying down. But really, just try to hang out in your own self.

There is some precedent to this, I think. At least according to an episode of Six Feet Under I saw, the Quakers have something similar:

Unprogrammed worship is the more traditional style of worship among Friends [Quakers] and remains the norm in Britain, Ireland, continental Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and parts of the United States. During an unprogrammed meeting for worship, Friends gather together in "expectant waiting" for divine leadings. Sometimes a meeting is entirely silent, sometimes quite a few people speak. Meeting for Worship generally lasts about an hour.

When they feel they are led by the spirit a participant will rise and share a message (give "vocal ministry") with those gathered. Typically, messages, testimonies, ministry, or other speech are not prepared as a "speech". Speakers are expected to discern the source of their inspiration — whether divine or self. After someone has spoken, it is expected that more than a few moments will pass in silence before further Ministry; there should be no spirit of debate.

Unprogrammed worship is generally deemed to start as soon as the first participant is seated, the others entering the room in silence. The Meeting for Worship ends when one person (usually predetermined) shakes the hand of another person present. All the members of the assembly then shake hands with their neighbours, after which one member usually rises and extends greetings and makes announcements.

wikipedia entry on Quakers

I certainly want to try a Quaker service. They sound very radical in a way that doesn't fit the stereotypical look of radicalism.

When meditation fails, focus on net relaxation

I've been on three meditation kicks in my life. Somehow I read an article or a book, and I'll get all excited about it for a week, by the second week it becomes challenging, and by the third or fourth week it stops completely.

Initially, when you haven't meditated in a while, your body will just be so receptive to it. It's like getting a massage the first time. Your body responds with, "where have you been all my life?"

But by the law of diminishing returns, you eventually get a little desensitized to it. In Mindfulness in Plain English, there are segments devoted to handling these moments. However, I kind of don't like the suggestions because they involve increasing your involvement with meditation.

Meditation, for me at least, starts to become a chore or another achievement arc. I start to find that I'm less relaxed than when I started.

I talked to some of my friends about meditation, and they have their own techniques. One friend says he practices what he calls "peacing out." This could be just sitting still on a bench in a park. Or it could be closing his eyes and reclining for a while.

Another friend of mine says she takes "mindful showers," where she tries to feel all the warm droplets making contact with her skin.

What I want to propose is simply this:

Do whatever it takes to achieve a net increase of relaxation.

Meditation is a good first step, but if that doesn't work out, do whatever else has worked. Read a book if that's your thing. Play video games. Turn off the computer. Just whatever it is, leave yourself more relaxed than when you started the task.

You could even ask the same about your job. How can I go through my day such that when I leave I'm more relaxed than when I started?

Relaxation IS a Panacea

I think the seductive appeal of self-help, religion, therapy, etc. is to find the Holy Grail: a panacea for life. A panacea is defined as A remedy for all diseases, evils, or difficulties; a cure-all.

Oftentimes I get excited by a new life-change idea, and 99 times out of 100 I have to remind myself, "Phil, such-and-such system is not a panacea!"

But I think relaxation is. Because 99% of the problems in your life can be aided with more relaxation.

Relaxation's opposite in anxiety, which is a fight-or-flight response. When you're in fight-or-flight, you're mind is focused. When you're focused, you're willfully blind to everything else. This then, becomes a good way to miss the real problems and solutions.

Often when I query my intuition or God about what I should be doing, the response is 9 times out of 10, "relax." If I follow the imperative and calm down, I'll find myself led automatically to a better way.

I think this is largely why Buddhist practices like meditation have endured for so many millennia. Because they work!

Check out this book. It has a 5-Star rating from Amazon. Frequently cited as the best introduction to meditation:

Relax right now

This is an interesting use-case for YouTube. I never thought to search for "relaxation video."

Pop on your headphones, turn on the volume, and tune out:

convincing myself I'm average

I need to "come back down to earth" as they say. I walk around pretending I'm really special. I do have many signature traits that would be outliers in society, but I have at least five times as many traits where I'm really just average .

I think part of the reason I have trouble taking criticism well or why I am arrogant is because I act like I'm somebody and expect to be treated like napoleon.

So, here's what I'm doing right now.

I have a list of about 40 traits that I'm neutral on (helpfulness, sensitivity, optimism, neurotic, honesty... etc..) and then I pick someone who is much worse in that trait than me, and then pick someone much better than me. Then, I take each of those individuals and myself (that's three people total) and try to mentally manifest the trait as it is in those three individuals. The point is that by comparison, I'll genuinely feel like I am "in the middle"--that I am an average person on that trait.

A benefit of this exercise is that it will make me appreciate my superiors more, while giving me mercy and compassion for those worse off.

This kind of thinking, of realistic modesty, will also make me more willing to work with groups. Instead of thinking that I can do everything and pilot the ship, I'll focus more on tapping the synthetic group strengths.