Humans live within concrete world. Thus, it is hard denial that people's transformation starting point is by looking at our norms.
In order to support those statements, those conclusions that I assert above, I will use sources from the above two books:
"Power of Habit" and
"Mind what you wear", along the theory of mental symmetry "
mental networks", "maslow's pyramid", and "
music"
The power of habit: Humans live within concrete world. Thus, it is hard denial that people's transformation starting point is by looking at our norms. What I am implying here is that concrete habits is the starting point for all personal development. That is how our childhood starts its learning process, as discussed in Piaget Childhood Development. That is how students achieve goals in the education system. They don't crave the routine itself (the benefits of having substance of understanding how the world works), but instead they crave for a concrete physical reward (the physical degree so they can earn more money in their lifetime, the praise by parents or the peer pressure of a diploma degree in order for the approval of low ties of organizations that we want to work for). The point is that I have found over and over again and I find self defeating myself that we all start learning and bridging routines and procedures not because we are craving the routine or procedure itself because we acknowledge it benefits us, but because we put boundaries and rules (where putting requires will power and boundaries and rules represent self discipline) artificially, as an indirect approach to still fulfill our old habits (getting the same reward) while also fulfilling new habits at the same time (the new routine) that can help us later on to take over our old cravings with cravings that match with our new habits. You see, some people later after doing education forcefully, acknowledge later that education was not ever about the degree or diploma, but instead to improve our way of thinking, or most importantly, to enable our main circuits, to understand how things work correctly, and by correctly, I mean to fill out our minds with content, to create out theories out of them, to dispute them by using critical thinking, and so on. Those elements we were taught in school, we would never imagined at our prime time of our age, on how useful later they could have been in our adult life, especially habits that reflect on making the most optimal decisions. Thus, it is imperative to understand that people have to understand how this framework of behavior works (which the power of habit describes) and once that framework of behavior becomes understood (in this case: cue-> procedure-> reward), it becomes an abstract habit (the other side of the amygdala will notice and make it as a theory). It is a habit that this book does not describe in detail, but it is the essence of how belief works. So if there is a god, it is a god like Dirac have said: One of mathematical beauty, where wherever we place variables in a theory, such as a formula (in this case the framework of how habits work), they would essentially print expected instead of random results. So if god exists, then that god must be the same essence of the scientific formulas of the objective world. But instead of analyzing how things work, we instead care for the first time in generations try to analyze how people work, and base of just that,
we found from natural cognitive theology, that some circuits give the same reward, one with content, and one without content. I propose that filling with content on how people work, such as this book tries to achieve than instead of making it as a mystery, gives us more control to our life, as the author have described within the end of the book. The author tries to express that there is a lot of ways to substitute our mind with other concrete habits. That is true. However, for abstract habits, for abstract theories, a world where academics show a crave for understanding how things work, a use case where you only see it in academics and not with the average person, we found that theories are not an easy substitution. There is not a lot of theories that are replaceable. And as Thomas Kuhn Scientific Revolutions describes, most scientist live and die with a partial understanding of the scientific discoveries and instead it is usually the young scientist that takes the lead with a better complete understanding on how the world works. It is the same feeling as being addicted to gambling, not because it is impossible to choose differently, but unlike the concrete world where the choices are multiple to replace an existing routine to get the same reward, theories are always limited and requires a long journey, especially given that theories require a lot of time and effort to study (instead of 5 minutes to grasp a concrete concept, this may take months and years), and as always, the habit needs to be formed as an indirect instead of a direct way of understanding how things work (like how students learn stuff from schools). This concludes us that the book "The Habit of Power" by Charles Duhigg, focuses on habits that are of concrete nature, or in regards to the theory of mental symmetry, we can also name them as "mercy mental networks". These mercy mental networks are the base on how most of us individuals drive our world (except less inclined to that is me :) or people and scientists that are obsessed with theories ). After several attempts, it is apparent and self defeating to admit that talking to them an indirect concept as a direct concept is kind of impossible for most individuals to even grasp. It needs kind of to be "sandwiched" with some familiarity as the book describes and requires a craving that is unrelated to the concept you are describing, feeding instead an old habit in a different procedure in order to replace the new habit with the old habit. Grasping those concepts are quite important because believe it or not, once you reach this stage and understand the theory of mental symmetry, think not whether you are an open minded person for accepting such theory, but think of how other people whether they locked into a different theory and they believe this theory works for them but they don't notice the externalizations that they affect by imposing such theory. So I kind of realized, especially for strangers, if you want to make a connection and guide them, think of them as the devil-advocate, the worst case scenario, or else, most of the time your communication will fail on getting across the point.
Mind what you wear: The second thing is discussing about self actualization, the highest floor of the Maslow's pyramid. Maslow's pyramid and its reflection to mental symmetry can be found within the old book of
Lorin Friesen "God, Theology, Cognitive Module", as one of the last sections within the table of contents. I advise to read that before moving on. The book "Mind what you wear" by Professor Karen J Pine, is an extension of "The power of habit", discussing the habits that are influenced by the cues we set to our self (the power of habit instead focuses mostly only on describing the routine and the reward within the framework of a habit). Given that both authors were a lot inspired by the father of Psychologist,
William James, specifically, the
material self, it is no wonder that they are good pair to just join those two authors together, as they essentially, describe the same topic. It is essential to understand that self actualization is the final destination of our own individuality to flourish. It is the only component where there is nothing "above it", "no pressure to reach other goal", "it is the final destination". Thus, instead of looking at self actualization main essence, we have to grasp how we reached in self actualization in the first place, which always comes from esteem, either directly (external self esteem with no content) or indirectly (internal self esteem with effort to gain some content to that motivation). We know external self-esteem is more crumbling, but alas, here is the main point of the theory of Maslow's pyramid:
If there is no internal self esteem, external self esteem overrides over. External self esteem can be described as peer pressure of others to give approval to you, the clothes you wear, and many other elements that boost your confidence. Imagine how many people have build any internal self esteem to themselves except of their required qualified skills to be employable on a career role? I assume many do not have any content filled in the internal self esteem, so that is why we live in a world where we are overclouded with external self esteem and be governed by it. Especially for strangers and people you do not know, the only way to express themselves is through external self esteem. However, that external self esteem should compliment with internal self esteem in the process like how education works. It is okay for our clothes to reflect our external self esteem of "what is" and "what we could be", as long our internal self esteem aligns on that same mission. It would be a mismatch or a hypocrisy, if what we wear, is what we do not actually become inside. It is interesting that women wear clothes to express their mood, but it is not essential if they don't put any effort to fill in content that represents their expression. In retrospect, men who ignore to caress their external image against only caressing the internal skills is not the full throttle life is all about, as people that do not express their identity externally to the world will not make a huge impact as they could in their full capacity. There are many other people that we let try to achieve that which they do not fit internal content in their heads, a more flawed map or strategy that fills peoples needs inadequately. So as long you are miles ahead relatively to others on fulfilling a better mental map externally as a journey, it is a wasted effort the benefits it could accrue to society if you didn't started more earlier on contributing on that or being the main core of such mission instead being a service of worship of someone that has a worse mental map than you do (does that make common sense?). In addition, apparel is a self reflection of our identity, in the same way music becomes a self reflection of how we view our world as. Thus, the analysis of music with mental symmetry which the author describes, which was one of his main core parts of his life, can also make me describe apparel with mental symmetry as well, which was part of my whole career so far, as well my close relatives (my passed away mom and my current wife) were/are big fans of apparel.
Now that the introduction is over, I will briefly describe an analysis of each book in detail.
Notes about the "The Power of Habit - How Mercy Mental Networks work"
Chapter 1: The Habit Loop - How Habits work: This is kind of a representation of how a static character represents. In this chapter, they describe a patient as a use case on how the habit loop works. However, habits always get influenced by new content and they alter in terms of variation and taste, can become stronger, can become less stronger, and be overridden with other habits. In this case, it seems all input trigger habits are
then disabled to be outputted after a routine and successful/failed craving has elapsed, as usually, a new input for the habit to self assess itself or be influenced as it happens by default is not there. If assessed with bad emotional experience, it will not notice it next time. If assessed with a new event that can convert us to a new habit, the motivation will always be driven in the same format, always being seen whenever we see the same cue, it will
always will feel like we are converting ourselves as a first attempt instead of an iterative attempt that makes the new habit that wants to replace an old habit more stronger and stronger. It seems time has frozen to that individual for his character did not progress any more to new experiences other than just showing all the different habit loops if the character is static. It is pretty freaky but at the same time scary to say the individual has stopped to gain growth to itself, but for one thing we can say sure is that whatever he picked up from the past, he still attains, the same foundations, the same beliefs, the same love, it is just that he doesn't has any system of flow in his mind to alter existing habits with new information, that even if he pushed against strong will power, and even if he did so, he would not realize next time to create such strong will power again cause he doesn't recollect he did strong will power before, to change his own character anymore. To many of us, it is a question to ask: If we had the ability to disembody our-self as philosopher Swedenborg has once said, and if habits is what represents the essence of our individuality, as Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics describe, is that how we will live for our rest of our life if we don't have a brain anymore to influence of changing our existing habits? Is this an acceptable way to live and if so why? And if we lived that way, does it make sense to create a static habit that we are able to respond in the world in the most efficient way as possible no matter the circumstance, like a scientific formula is always unalterable? Test and see if you can live your life with a habit that you never change (place it as a king) and see how long it lasts and don't think about changing it and see where it fails. For that reason, a theory like mental symmetry (even the theory of the power of habit cue->procedure->reward in a specific domain is much helpful than having no framework at all) is imperative in order to place a king that can fit most of our behavior to be compatible with anything in the world (I am not really confident on this, but it seem a theory imposes new cues or triggers so the individual can progress through the "same" theory next time it sees them instead the environment imposing what the individual should do. It is definitely a different way of seeing things and it is really scary and alienating to us, if such use case or scenario had to be).
Chapter 2: The Craving Brain - How to create habits: This book describes that we live our life with rewards as an enabler to activate certain procedures (that illustrates, such as Febreze had to change itself as a reward instead of a procedure. Febreze instead of removing odors resembling the activity instead became an enabler for people to clean the room more often while craving at the end to use the smell of the spray Febreze has). The reward concept of the "Power of Habit" was discussed much on the introduction in this post. In summary, rewards are an indirect way of changing old habits with new habits. In here, it describes that no procedure cannot be fulfilled without any reward. The point is that a reward does not need to be of concrete essence always. It can also be an abstract essence as well. Understanding how things work, an "a-ha" moment, making all things fit together, is a craving that people want to fulfill again and again, and the possibilities of fulfilling that habit becomes endless, as each event in our life is like a puzzle that awaits to be solved by the use of some understanding. For instance, using the framework of the power of habits cue->procedure->reward becomes a habit to fulfill the craving of our understanding, by replacing old bad habits with new better habits, and then improving new better habits with even better ones, an iterative process that never ends by the craving of gaining understanding of topics we had no clue how they worked before. I think ironically, this abstract habit, which represents a theory, according to Thomas Kuhn scientific revolutions, becomes a king of the king of all habits, as a meta-habit, describing habits about habits. Having this framework and having faith on it that it will stimulate the cravings of understanding (which we will see later on the next chapter how faith emerges) is the most powerful way to control our habits. No wonder this book was popular and thank god it is, because now its more easier for people who are familiar with this book, to connect them in some way, if we want to discuss them how the brain works. In summary, this book created a new habit that it would not emerged if it wasn't observed by scientists and discovered, if it wasn't described in a book, if it wasn't read by many to use it as their main application and be driven and see its positive results, just like new technology would not emerge if a scientific theory was not discovered, written, taught and create products out of it. Next chapter talks about "procedure" and beliefs on changing a habit.
Chapter 3 The golden rule of habit change: Why transformation occurs: Here it talks about two concepts. Substituting habits and having faith that things will work. As in economics, where purchasing power can influence people buying alternative products that have the same benefits (lets eat cheddar cheese instead of Swiss cheese), so our habits can find alternative habits that can push the same rewards. One of the key points is how to master a skill. If you are jack of all trades, it is impossible to master a skill. It is important to have confidence that you can do a skill and that happens only by the repetition of doing the same forms of actions again and again, such as playing the piano. The essence is of course deliberate practice, but before deliberate practice, we all start at deliberate practice when we try to learn something new in the end. In the example of the football use case described in chapter 3, people had to master the habits of reacting immediately and not thinking of uncertainty, but that takes time, as you have to fill the gap of the uncertainty to certainty by filling all the use cases. At some point, you have to remove the plug and stop having doubts to yourself anymore even if there is some marginal error that your cues did not respond correctly, but the marginal error is so low, that in most cases you read the play correctly. That is the use case or framework or theory that the coach instructed to the players, that if they followed it, they would gain the craving of winning. At first they had doubts, but later on they believed and they started to win games. However, when reaching to the final game, their belief was tested to their limits. This is no different than when you have to play piano under huge audience. It is when feelings overwhelm the mind of uncertainty and let the mind become in a frozen state. In the case of playing a melody, we do remember the notes how the melody plays in the piano yesterday through our tip of our nose, but when it comes on the day we have to play on the huge audience, we start to wonder with contempt whether I really actually remember how the melody really is in our mind or not. It is this type of adversity or authority, in this case the audience, that tests our faith under how much level of pressure we can be confident that we can pull it off.
Chapter 4 Keystone habits or the ballad of Paul O Neil: This is an interesting chapter that discusses how small habits can change a set of habits that are associated or labeled under the same category. Figuring out which small habits can be represented keystone habits is of essence, as not all habits can create a domino effect of influencing other habits, but many can do, and some in greater or less effect. What keystone habits have a pattern is that there is a form of generality, that is, the generality is not seen, you have to shape the generality, you have to describe and present how this habit fulfills several needs. For instance, Paul O Neil importance on "safety first" was not seen by people in the hope O Neil expected them to see it as. It took them time to see the effects of how this keystone habits benefited not only the workers but the company's costs on liability as well better quality products for the clients that receive from less defects. This in all turn-around benefited every role within the organization, whether it was an employee, an executive, or a client. Once a new habit achieves replacing an old habit, the mind can instinctively see what are the differentiation of the old habit and the new habit, as both are
now explicitly shown instead of just implicitly acknowledged. Then it is very easy, given that now they are in empirical form, how the new habit type can be categorized as while the old habit type can be categorized as of, and then do more actions that resemble the category of the new habit. Keystone habits work in an essence that it makes an implicit thing an explicit thing, it is like the story when executives never knew that they treated people in poor conditions until somebody explicitly documented about it and they do immediate action about it. Contributor style focuses on small acts that have high frequency to occur as a major opportunity to control his destiny (this is the cognitive style that wants to have the most control compared to other cognitive styles). For instance, one of the traits of Contributor style biographically was found of being frugal in small transactions and sets it up as a keystone habit. Because unlike high transactions occur less frequently, acting on small transactions which occur more frequently allows the Contributor to make it visible to himself the trait of frugality so the individual is more prepared and already empowered as a habit on being frugal in big transactions as well.
Chapter 5 Starbucks and the habit of success when willpower becomes automatic: There is no such essence where willpower becomes automatic, as willpower always has a stamina. One I admit myself is this blog itself requires a lot of willpower, as it requires 1. lot of reading 2. lot of writing 3. while taking care of the daily needs of relationship/work/self. I would really wanted to articulate my writing more clearly, but I acknowledge the limits of my will power and put it as a plan to refresh this material in a book when I have more free time, contact connections, and able to make some small impact of what I have written so far within my life. However, will power is a true blessing, it is the essence of how freedom or free will emerges, it is by how we are able to fill content to new habits that are more motivated and able to crush existing habits. Will power in the book is described as writing plans to yourself. That is one of the great examples and it is
one of the elements of my draft of my next social network to be (I want people to understand where they are, where they want to be, and have a plan on how to go there by understanding by what they lack and what new features they need). As the book described in Chapter 5, patients tried explaining all the bottlenecks they were about to go and how they would be able to resolve those obstacles, making these new habits breath new air when the cue arrived instead of being struggled by the existing habits when the event arrived. I think the best habit to enforce our self within our willpower is replacing a habit that looks at a tunnel-vision to a one that looks at the big picture. You want to address the problems instead of ignoring them and locking them like in a black box and representing it as a pandora box. Why bad organizations exist and why good organizations exist is between the ability to admit mistakes and create new learning processes that fills in the big picture and be prepared ahead of it next time instead of being narrow minded which we have seen in the
black box thinking book, within the airplane, healthcare, and criminal justice system. Starbucks does not want its employees to re-invent the wheels. So for that reason, Starbucks train its employees to existing patterns the company already knows that people behaved not according to the full picture of things and made them as small exercises for new recruits to solve as homework so that they plan ahead how to react on those situations appropriately.
Chapter 6 The power of crisis. How leaders create habits through accident and design: A crisis can either represent learning from the mistakes of others or just stuffing it in a black box. Chapter 5 described how to resolve the situation of a crisis. Chapter 6 describes the opportunity of a crisis to either use or ignore it. It is up to the organization itself. Basically, this chapter is already devoted by a whole book
Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed, that gives in more detail and more stories about how failure can be a learning material, as it is the only way to grow ourselves. Thus, I did an
extensive analysis of Chapter 6 by analyzing the book of Black Box Thinking. That analysis gives a more clear view (as it includes Thomas Kuhn Scientific Revolutions) what is going on with organizations when a crisis happens.
Chapter 7 How Target Knows what you want before you do when companies predict and manipulate habits: This chapter talks the essence that habits are predictable and the only time when habits change is when you are either forced to change yourself because you read a book like the "Power of Habits" (which is very rare and the book ironically doesn't describe that until the end, as it is used so far in schools, but maybe later it will influence worldwide?) or the environment changes with new events coming on our life that forces us to create new routines we never did before, such as getting into a new marriage, having babies, and so on. Those events need to feed new needs they never had to feed before. Those needs need to be fulfilled by companies where clients are not very familiar with. The one that comes early to the door step is the one that has high chances the customer will become loyal. That is how the retail store
Target (according to current writing of this blog, it is the second largest retail in United States) got its big scoops of money - targeting people as early as possible who are on unfamiliar territory on new needs so they can become their loyal customers. Imagine if you have baby and you don't have the time to go outside because you have to take care of the baby. It is such cases where e-commerce, for instance, can grab that opportunity and make those new mothers as loyal customers. Not only that, creating a new habit, associating a purchase with a retail store, has chances of becoming a keystone habit, the implicit becoming an explicit thing, motivating people to buy everything they need (and not only for the baby) in that commerce site. The problem is that the retail target store knew
way early with their algorithms, I mean
way way early that their customers where pregnant, that even their parents didn't know that they were pregnant in the first place. It becomes a topic of controversy, so Target had to make the unsettling thing to settling, by making the coupons that they wanted to target to instead be filled up with other random items so it didn't appear that the company was stalking to the customer's buying patterns. This in essence tries to characterize the characteristics of a mental network by Lorin Friesen (which we refer them to as habits so far): A mental network expects a consistent input. Inconsistent input brings pain. The whole point is that actively changing habits is a thing we "choose" our self and "acknowledge" that we want to change an existing habit with another, as we even put "plans" to it, in order to motivate that habit to override our old habits. In contrast, when we do not want to change an existing habit and others force us to change that habit, then we get more inconsistent input and we receive pain. For that reason, the act of having my own sense of privacy, even when reality is different and inconsistent with what the person believes, as long we don't show inconsistent input that we violate the sense of privacy, the person will still believe that people do not violate the sense of privacy. Here, familiarity to influence someone to adapt something unfamiliar is tossed out with the sandwich effect in order to influence people to change habits (mixing random items with targeted items to the customer to hide they actually spied the customer).
I am not sure if this sandwich effect will ever make individuals accept that big brother is always be watching you or instead be in denial about it. However, I do agree a lot of cases where the sandwich effect
does work. It is the same case of when going to school in order to get diploma. Money and being accepted by society is something familiar for a kid, as he receives allowances and approval by parents, but the use of understanding how things work is not something the kid can still grasp at that time. I remember in one of my class where cultures were classified as follows: American use Sandwich, Germans do not add any familiarity so they give the raw burger instead, while Japanese do not add any unfamiliar topic, so they only get the bread instead. That is maybe one of the reasons why the Japanese culture is something that is very hard to change, such as the gender gap inequality. In contrast, cultures such as Germany, may have to wire in a brain in such a way, that they are accustomed to not feel threatened by unfamiliarity and able to be much faster on adapting through changes.
Chapter 8 Saddleback Church and the montgomery bus boycott: This chapter describes how the power of acquaintances (low-ties), an external self esteem, is so powerful, that can set the whole society to a revolution. However, such form of revolution is not enough if it is not feed out with internal self esteem. For instance, the Saddleback church was not able to help all people to learn about the bible within the church, so what McGravan, the founder of the church, asked for its people, was to do their bible studies in their home itself. Only when we transition from external self esteem (lower motives) to a more powerful force as our internal self esteem (higher motives as in this example illustrates) we can hold more stability to stand on habits even under strong influence. What it means is that everything starts with lower motives, but at the end of the day, we should always strive for higher motives that will be the main pillars of support of our lower motives to still stand even under influence. Esteem is part of the Maslow pyramid. External and internal self esteem will be discussed more in detail when analyzing the book "mind what you wear".
Chapter 9: THE NEUROLOGY OF FREE WILL Are We Responsible for Our Habits? As I described in my previous blogs,
our free will is based on our choices (also called as motivations), choices that only come out by creating a mental map (like the example of Starbucks creating a plan ahead) that can replace an old habit with a new habit. It requires a lot of willpower for the old habit to replace the new habit and once that new habit becomes from implicit to explicit, such as achieving a keystone habit, can transform the rest of our motivation to be pulled by the new habit as it is empirically visible. That can be used to replace bad habits to good habits, or the inverse, transforming good habits to bad habits, such as in the case of casinos. The casino example just alone without discussing about habits is just a great read alone, on how we manipulate habits within individuals. It is terrifying and any person who works on marketing should just pay attention when we manipulate habits of others that narrow minded focus on the domain of their profit. If we look at it through the big picture, it just crosses the limits of humanity, as it places infrastructures to enable or convert people from good habits to bad habits. That is why you should be grateful why government tries to limit gambling and other restrictions imposed, but at the end of the day, it is us as individuals, as discussed from chapter 8, that we should commit on internal self esteem (such as studying and understanding the book of the power of habit, makes us independent of others influencing of our own habits) instead of external self esteem, such as social ties, that are prone to manipulate our own habits. In supreme court, it was alleged that gambling could be similar as someone who killed a person unconsciously when they were asleep walking. The difference between the two is: the gambling person's brain is active within all regions at all times and if it became unconscious due to drinking, it was an act that was of no necessity. In contrast, sleeping is a necessity and when the person's brain does something while sleepwalking, a part of the brain becomes disabled and he is not self aware of the actions. Two stories one of necessity and in turn becomes a disabled mind and the other with no necessity to disable the mind and most of the time with an enabled mind makes the case of someone gambling not a one who did it involuntarily compared to someone who murdered someone while sleep walking. However, I even extended that the court system should go "beyond"
Locke's unconsciousness on punishing people,
but instead to what their current habits represent to limit the punishment level, as well the punishment system should be worked in a way where when the person gets out of jail, he becomes of better character and a role model of society, instead of becoming an individual that represents a dead end to society, as currently society judge people only by looking at his criminal record. As Black Box Thinking discusses, growth only comes from mistakes, not from avoiding mistakes.
"Mind what you wear"
This book essentially describes the power of external self esteem, as well
influencing the cue within the framework of habit instead just focusing to substitute procedure to replace an old habit with a new habit or adding a new reward for a habit to become enabled. In this case we influence the cue with the use of clothes. By the nature of clothes are, unlike external environment, ones clothes go wherever we go and stays around us along within our identity (just like when you have someone close to you, like you wife and husband). This cue is something though that unlike our close loved ones influence us, it is instead something that we can choose how to influence our self by the use of clothes, as long others don't influence on what to actually wear. Closed relationship with people along with the representation of the clothes we use, represent to James William, as the
"material self". Clothes not influence other individuals, but our own self as well, in the same way when we choose a partner to be our wife, it becomes in some sense a part of our identity.
If you compare with the
essay about music essay in Lorin Friesen, you can get the similarities with what the author of "Mind what you wear" book and Lorin Friesen describes: clothes are more than just an aesthetic thing or a thing of taste, like the model being the canvas to paint something aesthetic. Yes, especially Lorin Friesen, describes in his essay that music correlates with science, so in the same premises, the author of this book describes how apparel influence us psychologically, making apparel a
business at last for people to subject it with substance of science instead of all fluff and only care about the operations and just bench-marking only what brands just only sell. Like a business operation, what habits we instruct others to impose, can be either to facilitate others in decisions like Target does by helping maternity mothers to buy their necessary stuff (but its motivation most time is not really an altruistic act, but to gain loyal customers for profit, a craving that does not match with the original procedure), or it can be to facilitate others from good habits to bad habits, such as the casino industry does, or the pornography industry indirectly in some way if they try to use data analysis to make their customers addicted as each company's mission is
something people try to obsess about, and so on.
We notice that some clothes make us more depressed, such as a buggy top, or wearing clothes that cover most of our body, such as jeans, or where studies report that we de-individualize our self, such as covering our head with a hoodie, or wearing a specific dress code that all have to wear within an organization. Lorin in the same vein discusses that music transforms people with no content these days. In these days we instead listen to very simple beats to feel the ecstasy of a rhythm. Songs today does not include a melody or journey, where we go from home, find an obstacle and fight with it, and then our old motivation gets replaced with a new motivation, such as like all sonatas come into those 3 stages within classical music. Classical musical has complicated rhythm that is hard to identify the pattern as the emotions are more complicated to express, yet for the good classical music listener, he can identify the patterns that are composed within the melody.
It is interesting that the author expresses that
clothing can be a key cornerstone habit as the book implies in bold letters: "Get your clothing right and everything else will fall into place." Although I agree that it is a good starting point to use clothes as a bridge to communicate with others and also improve our self esteem, which is a valid point when James William had thoughts of suicide and tried to transform himself by taking control of his external reality. However, there needs to also have correspondence to improve according to Maslow's pyramid, our internal self esteem, such as in chapter 8 of the power of habit illustrates as the last main bottleneck for the transformation of a culture to erupt. So if we want to create a diagram of the Power of Habits in terms of clothes, we would have:
Clothes -> Changes our identity to a new cue -> Different Routines -> Different Rewards. It seems that a new cue represent a substitute of another cue that can represent for doing the same routine, which the author defines it as "enclothed cognition". For instance, focusing on doing well on studies can be re-enforced by being in an environment, such as sitting in a classroom or library. However, if whatever the circumstances prescribe, if you have on your backpack a jacket of white coat scientist wear and strap it on, as the study suggests, you will be able to focus to solve puzzle exercises more nimbly and accurately than without it. Thus, enclothed cognition can represent placing cues that help people to enable specific habits (
routine -> reward) to emerge by the use of clothing. Wear the wrong type of clothes for a situation, such as wearing swimwear clothes while doing a mathematical exercise, and as studies suggest, women perform worse than men with the same type of clothes. It seems women are more sensitive to external self esteem as the studies suggest. It also seems women are creating a platonic form by what the average person expects she has to wear in order to be recognized and get praised in order to get the maximum external self esteem (while in many cases, as opposed to men, ignoring internal self esteem, such as acquiring a skill, such as being good at math). As the study suggests, clothing is used as form of guiding to our self actualization by using external self esteem (the top 3 results are to be confident, comfortable, express myself while only 28% say to be fashionable). I suggest that we can extend chapter 8 of the Power of Habit to what other factors can create acquaintances. Besides strong friends can create acquaintances with friends of friends, acquaintances are easy to make by using clothes that are shown by peer pressure that you need to respect that person and compliment, as you feel you are connected within that social group. That is why people compliment some people that stand out with their clothes compared to others who just try to hide under the background with their clothes. Another reason may be is that most communication happens when one person wants to stand out and do something in the external word and the only way to do that is with the help of others. The only ones with high rate of possible candidates that can contribute are others that also stand out and do something in the external world. And in order to stand out, you have to wear clothes that are vibrant and makes you stand out more from the rest of the crowd. Thus, that is another factor that people can form acquaintances, forcing for another way a person to establish self esteem. But if you have seen in the last chapter 9 of the Power of Habit of Self Esteem, that was also a type of way the casino organization manipulated the habits of people by establishing a sense of being acquaintances. For instance, the casino spokeperson could say, "I gave you this and this and this, should you as an invisible contract, although you are not forced to, to give something in return back to me?". So that is how external self esteem is vulnerable if it does not have an internal self esteem that can hold as a pillar for those external self esteems to not be manipulated and get crumbled. In other words people need to have foundations (such as the framework the "Habits of Power") in order to not be influenced by external pressures and instead be guided by internal foundations.
Last but not least, a great advice the author says is "What you wear mirrors your mental state". I totally agree that it does represent a mental state. But what mental state does it represent? A one that is hypocrite to itself , a one with lofty ambitions, or a one that wishes to improve himself, is trying to improve himself, and already improved part of himself? We all wish people wear clothes for the latter part reason. But in order for that to happen, people have to create a proper mental map, a proper foundation, a proper internal self esteem, that will more reflect their clothes actualize progressively become successful in their life and that they can manage their habits, wealth, and network with balance. Having the proper attire shows that you have the passion, determination, re-enforcing your mental map that you are ready to collide with the external world and make a difference. It means following the golden rule of habits as discussed in Chapter 3 of the power of habit: Believe in the mental map and follow them as natural instinct and follow ahead, as there will always be low risks that are unavoidable, no matter what emotions you will get rolled down against adversity. As my blogs go onward and onward, I see for the same effort right now, although I got new discoveries and connections, they become over time less and less, creating opportunities that I can start tackling myself where nobody has re-invented the wheel for those yet. The apparel industry is one of them and is one that I have worked for a long time and many people see there is no science to it in the same manner people disapproved in the old times where the female brain was no different than the male brain. If there is only one god, then that god must not be playing with dice, as Einstein said. So if that is so, let us find god in a scientific way, let us see how people work in the same way how we discovered how the world work, as we, part of being machine learners, I think our creator wants us to reach our ultimate state where we are conscious how not only the objective world works, but as well how the subjective world works. For that reason, I will focus how to make science on subjective stuff, such as in this case, how to create a personal integrated system (in the same way we integrate objectively different departments by an ERP: Enterprise Resource Planning) that there is an alignment instead of a mismatch with the mental map of internal self esteem against the clothes that creates the external self esteem which boost our-self and the external public. Since I am in this industry, fate or not, it is better to do something about it, as anybody else would love to have this opportunity and I become a burden if I don't do anything about it.
We talked about habits and we see some countries are progressively change fast or on average pace, such as Western Europe and United States while some change in a slow pace, such as Japan, by illustrating the example of sandwich, only meat, and bread correspondingly. A very recent article at the time of writing this post was posted that
"Japanese women are being urged to swap flats for high heels to 'empower themselves' and improve their posture". We know Japan has the most slowest country to change the pace of eradicating the gender gap of career progression within its country that it tries to use tactics of external self esteem as a starting point for women to gain their rights, even when those external self esteem activities, such as wearing heels, academically and scientifically, are not healthy for women to constantly wear.. The article later says quoting
"British people petitioned parliament in the UK, calling for a change to an outdated dress code law that allowed employers to require women to wear high heels in the work place.". In contrast, that means British women, a country that at least progressively has a faster pace of changing things more than Japan does, realized they have created internal self esteem that they are confident that they can do their part keeping the gender gap not going astray by not requiring to use external self esteem anymore. As Maslow's theory goes in terms of self esteem:
If both external and internal self esteem exist, internal self esteem overrides external self esteem.
I think I hit grid and made all the lights of the town turn on. The world is more interesting and not boring after all. Lets live life instead of watching old soap operas. The real soap opera, creating science out of the subjective and the conflicts that will ensue is about to begin in the next decades. Improving operations (globalization) will be the old me at some point when we will have reached the peak of all infrastructures around the world be at its maximum capacity. At the same time, there is always exemplars that we learn from new use cases of migrating an existing infrastructure to different cultures, and for that, I do not say it was a wasted effort, for it is a great thing for our current times. However, I think it is more exciting to lead to a "new thing" that can help the world exponentially substantially improve their quality of life. Lets pack it all these nice things in a sandwich for these things and make sure they become explicit at some point in order for keystone habits to emerge and transform the world, shall we?
