To me it’s somewhat analogous to exercise, eating well, and sleeping well.
The benefits are “small” in one sense, but highly leveraged in another sense.
I don’t necessarily feel that I get a lot out of any single session, aside from a mental interrupt (which could also be achieved by going for a walk, or whatever).
It’s more like, doing it consistently over time moves the needle in some very small way, almost imperceptible. Like, I’ll notice I’m a little more patient with my kids, a little less anxious during a work meeting, a little slower to get angry, a little quicker to let anger dissipate.
And if I wasn’t paying attention, these changes might be so subtle that I wouldn’t even say anything had changed, and I could easily be one who says it “doesn’t work”.
But while those changes are all small and subtle, the downstream impact can be enormous. The difference between staying angry for a minute versus an hour is often the difference between good long term relationships and divorce, or the difference between going to prison, or not. Lots of long-tail negative outcomes get avoided. And the benefit of having a lower idle anxiety level seems to have a cumulative impact, or a thing that kicks off a virtuous cycle. Like, I feel a little less anxious, so I make a less worse decision to not medicate with junk food, so I sleep a little better, and make another better decision the next day, and so on.
It’s hard to really convey, because it’s very subtle but the principle is, I think, that the difference between doing a little, and doing zero, has a way larger impact than the arithmetic calculation would suggest. Like the difference between spending a dollar more than you earn, versus spending a dollar less than you earn. It’s a $2 difference and seems insignificant, but it’s the difference between debt and a path to wealth.
The benefits are “small” in one sense, but highly leveraged in another sense.
I don’t necessarily feel that I get a lot out of any single session, aside from a mental interrupt (which could also be achieved by going for a walk, or whatever).
It’s more like, doing it consistently over time moves the needle in some very small way, almost imperceptible. Like, I’ll notice I’m a little more patient with my kids, a little less anxious during a work meeting, a little slower to get angry, a little quicker to let anger dissipate.
And if I wasn’t paying attention, these changes might be so subtle that I wouldn’t even say anything had changed, and I could easily be one who says it “doesn’t work”.
But while those changes are all small and subtle, the downstream impact can be enormous. The difference between staying angry for a minute versus an hour is often the difference between good long term relationships and divorce, or the difference between going to prison, or not. Lots of long-tail negative outcomes get avoided. And the benefit of having a lower idle anxiety level seems to have a cumulative impact, or a thing that kicks off a virtuous cycle. Like, I feel a little less anxious, so I make a less worse decision to not medicate with junk food, so I sleep a little better, and make another better decision the next day, and so on.
It’s hard to really convey, because it’s very subtle but the principle is, I think, that the difference between doing a little, and doing zero, has a way larger impact than the arithmetic calculation would suggest. Like the difference between spending a dollar more than you earn, versus spending a dollar less than you earn. It’s a $2 difference and seems insignificant, but it’s the difference between debt and a path to wealth.