We are ALL living lives of both emtional and spiritual dysfunction. The most emotionally dysfunctional people are in psychiatric facilities [known in Hollywood as "mental hospitals"] but all of us to varying degrees suffer from some level of dysfunction. The most spiritually dysfunctional people deny the existence of G-d and the soul [and need the most serious help they should all have a refuah shleima] but even religious people have their spiritual failings.
The avoda of mussar is to put our finger on our dysfunctions with an eye towards repairing them. For that we live. In order to do this it is critical to understand what make us tick and why we think and act as we do. The greatest chachmei ha-nefesh were our rabbis who made countless statements that are consistent with the latest in modern psychology. The world might have changed technologically over the years but human nature remains the same.
With that in mind I would like to expand a little on the article that was presented.
1] The last one hundred years of research suggest that you, and everyone else, still believe in a form of naïve realism. You still believe that although your inputs may not be perfect, once you get to thinking and feeling, those thoughts and feelings are reliable and predictable. We now know that there is no way you can ever know an “objective” reality, and we know that you can never know how much of subjective reality is a fabrication, because you never experience anything other than the output of your mind. Everything that’s ever happened to you has happened inside your skull.
This means that all of your problems only exist to the extent that you give them life! The moment you change your perception, your biggest problems can turn into your greatest successes.
Also - don't think you understand another human being. People usually project their own subjective reality on others. This is a mistake. If you want to understand someone else - LISTEN to him very carefully.
It is important to note that the ONLY objective reality is as it is presented to us by G-d Himself. That is why it was so important that He give us the Torah. Without it we live in a make believe world.
For example: People create a reality, billions of people, that a game [such as soccer or basketball] has importance. This is an invention of their minds. Games, on an objective level, don't matter. There are many other examples.
2] For many things, your attitudes came from actions that led to observations that led to explanations that led to beliefs. Your actions tend to chisel away at the raw marble of your persona, carving into being the self you experience from day to day. It doesn’t feel that way, though. To conscious experience, it feels as if you were the one holding the chisel, motivated by existing thoughts and beliefs. It feels as though the person wearing your pants performed actions consistent with your established character, yet there is plenty of research suggesting otherwise. The things you do often create the things you believe.Indeed ... this is the foundation of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which aims to change how we think by first changing what we do, until we internalize a set of beliefs about how those actions define who we are. McRaney explains how this works:
At the lowest level, behavior-into-attitude conversion begins with impression management theory, which says you present to your peers the person you wish to be. You engage in something economists call signaling by buying and displaying to your peers the sorts of things that give you social capital… Whatever are the easiest-to-obtain, loudest forms of the ideals you aspire to portray become the things you own, such as bumper stickers signaling to the world you are in one group and not another. These things then influence you to become the sort of person who owns them.
This is what so sfarim call אחרי הפעולות נמשכים הלבבות - Act a certain way and you will turn into that type of person.
3] You can see the proof in an MRI scan of someone presented with political opinions that conflict with her own. The brain scans of a person shown statements that oppose her political stance show that the highest areas of the cortex, the portions responsible for providing rational thought, get less blood until another statement is presented that confirms her beliefs. Your brain literally begins to shut down when you feel your ideology is threatened.
That is why people are so resistant to change. They are psychologically wired to be that way. Don't try to argue with a Satmer Chossid that the medina isn't an act of Satan. Don't try to argue with a Lubavitcher [at least many of them] that the Rebbe passed away and - that's it. Moshiach will be another man.One Lubavitcher tried to convince me that the Rebbe knows EVERYTHING. That means that he could walk into a room with 700 Chinese people and tell them all - in Chinese - their life histories. Quoting psukim and a gemara that even Moshe Rabbeinu didn't know it all didn't faze him. He insisted that both Moshe Rabbeinu and his Rebbe knew [know?] everything. Don't try to convince a Modern Orthodox lawyer from New Rochelle [although I am sure that every Jew in New Rochelle is a great person] that the greatest goal in life is to sit in kollel and learn non-stop for life and never go to work. In all such cases, their brains will SHUT DOWN. I am not saying that the above assertions are necessarily true. I AM saying that if a claim runs counter to a person's ideology, it is virtually impossible to change his mind.
4] When you feel anxiety over your actions, you will seek to lower the anxiety by creating a fantasy world in which your anxiety can’t exist, and then you come to believe the fantasy is reality, just as Benjamin Franklin’s rival did. He couldn’t possibly have lent a rare book to a guy he didn’t like, so he must actually like him. Problem solved.
[…]
The Benjamin Franklin effect is the result of your concept of self coming under attack. Every person develops a persona, and that persona persists because inconsistencies in your personal narrative get rewritten, redacted, and misinterpreted. If you are like most people, you have high self-esteem and tend to believe you are above average in just about every way. It keeps you going, keeps your head above water, so when the source of your own behavior is mysterious you will confabulate a story that paints you in a positive light.
That is how people consistently sin - they just convince themselves that it is really OK. Case in point - an formerly Orthodox rabbi who wanted to marry a man wrote a book proving that it is biblically permitted [!!]. This is a classic case of creating a fantasy world in order to maintain one's sense of self-esteem.
We justify our spending habits, our immersion in excessive physical pleasure, our self-centeredness etc. etc.
If one has a Rebbi who will lay down the truth or is brutally honest with him/herself then real change can be accomplished.
5] Pay attention to when the cart is getting before the horse. Notice when a painful initiation leads to irrational devotion, or when unsatisfying jobs start to seem worthwhile. Remind yourself pledges and promises have power, as do uniforms and parades. Remember in the absence of extrinsic rewards you will seek out or create intrinsic ones. Take into account [that] the higher the price you pay for your decisions the more you value them. See that ambivalence becomes certainty with time. Realize that lukewarm feelings become stronger once you commit to a group, club, or product. Be wary of the roles you play and the acts you put on, because you tend to fulfill the labels you accept. Above all, remember the more harm you cause, the more hate you feel. The more kindness you express, the more you come to love those you help.So Milton Glaser was right after all when he observed, “If you perceive the universe as being a universe of abundance, then it will be. If you think of the universe as one of scarcity, then it will be.”
