Appendix I: Habit Engineering Extras
1. “Who Not How”
Stop guessing. Stop it. Stop guessing about what it takes to be successful.
There is already an answer. And I don’t necessarily mean this in terms of business or making money (although it applies there too). I mean in any endeavor involving happiness, growth, change, health, etc. – any area of life.
Unless you are trying to get yourself to Mars and back, someone has already done it.
Quit focusing on the “how” and focus on the “who.”
You can pay someone to get you the result – for example, hire a personal trainer and meal-prep service.
You can surround yourself with people to get you the result – join a church to become more spiritual or a run club to be more active.
Or you can ask someone to help – ask for an introduction or favor.
Or you can simply copy exactly what they did (with or without them knowing).
That is one of the most overlooked mental models. Any personal change effort you’re trying to make, if you find yourself guessing, stop guessing. Focus on the who, not the how.
2. “Social Inertia”
Who you spend time with is who you become.
People’s lives are a reflection of the norms of their peer group. This group includes anyone whose opinion matters to you.
One of the best ways to change your lifestyle is to involve yourself with new groups.
If you haven’t been able to stick to gratitude journaling, get an accountability buddy.
If you haven’t been able to maintain meditation, practice with a Zen center.
If you haven’t been able to stick to your exercise habit, join a group fitness class.
And if you feel high-strung, stressed out, and focused on extrinsic yardsticks like getting the Ivy League master’s degree or the big promotion, take a look around. Are you surrounded by others running the same race? As Tim Kreider wrote of dating in New York City: “Everyone is too busy and thinks they can do better.”
Your social network shapes your way of life.
3. Coaching & Coaching Yourself
Consider hiring a life or executive coach to help you make a change – there are many options. You can also coach yourself. Most coaches use some variant of the GROW Model…
Goal: Three months from now (or some other time frame), how will you know your efforts were successful? Get specific. Where do you want to be?
Reality: Where are you now?
Options, Opportunities, Obstacles: What are all the routes possible to go from where you are to where you want to be? What could get in the way?
Way Forward: What’s the next action or actions?
Talk to yourself or journal through this process. Then coach yourself over the coming weeks. If you get stuck, here are some advanced coaching tactics:
Past into present: What has worked or not worked before for a situation like this?
Future into present: What advice would your older, future self give to you now?
Advice to someone else: What advice would you give to someone you care about in this position?As-if thinking: What are all the options here, even the ones that seem unrealistic or impossible?
Opposite or reversal: What if you did the opposite? What if the roles were reversed? What are the consequences of not doing anything rather than doing something?
Below is an advanced coaching technique you can also use on yourself. The general idea is to divide yourself into two people – one who does and one who observes. The observer practices awareness without judgment: intentional noticing.
Create a prompt to regularly evoke awareness of your behaviors and tendencies. Start with a goal – what are you trying to increase awareness of? Then create daily and/or weekly prompts.
Example: I want to improve my work-life balance
Daily
Was my life balanced today? How so?
What did I do for myself today?
How much attention did I give to my spouse, friends, or family today?
What thoughts came up as I made decisions about time?
Weekly
What did I learn this week?
What were the biggest draws on my attention?
What can I sustain or improve from this week?
Example: I want to do more to prioritize sleep
Daily
How did I sleep last night? What contributed to that?
What is getting in the way?
What has worked to support this priority?
Weekly
What did I learn this week?
What were the biggest challenges to sleep health?
What sleep habits can I sustain or improve from this week?
Example: I want to find more meaning in my work
Daily
What elements of my work did I focus on today?
Can I connect my actions today to benefiting or serving someone else?
Can I connect my actions today to values or a broader mission I believe in?What did I do today that felt purposeless?
Weekly
What did I learn this week?
What were the biggest draws on my passion and purpose?
Which moments, activities, or people led me to feel more meaning?
Consider adopting your own awareness practice and pairing it with a new habit.
For example, you could schedule a daily mindfulness meditation alongside this self-observation practice. Or you could do a brief time audit each day to assess how to better manage your time. You could even use the practice to prompt an act of kindness or gratitude. There are many options.
Appendix II: Nature & Health
Maybe the simplest advice I could give for health and happiness is just go outside.
We’ll cover the science in a moment. But consider this – it’s a Sunday afternoon and you’re out on a beautiful fall hike with some friends or family by the lake. You take a seat by the edge of the water and take in the sun, breeze, and blue sky. How are you feeling at that moment?
There are exceptions to the rule. But odds are you feel pretty darn good, or at the very least, alright. But alright in the real sense, as in “all is right.”
I often wonder, is our increasing separation from nature the problem – so to speak?
Perhaps a lack of connection to nature is responsible, at least in part, for our present-day issues with chronic illness and mental health issues.
In Rewilding: Meditations, Practices, and Skills for Awakening in Nature, Micah Mortali argues that a disconnect from nature is a disconnect from our nature. It may be that much of this sort of psychological discomfort is born out of a desire to get out of the world of abstraction and mental over-stimulation and into the embodied experience of being interwoven with the natural world.
He uses terms like inter-species loneliness, ecological boredom, and life force deficit to describe the impact of the lost connection with nature. In my words, it’s the “SeaWorld Effect.” There are many stories of the highly intelligent orca whale captured to live out its life in a small, artificial pool forced to entertain crowds. Most of these stories go on with the whales beginning to exhibit psychosis, depression, and their fins becoming so atrophied that it flops over to one side. In some cases, the whales resort to ramming themselves headlong into the walls of the enclosure or lashing out violently against their trainers.
Now, at this point, you may be thinking – “depressed whales, ecological boredom, and – did he just say life force?”
I’m not going to argue that this last paragraph is a totally scientific presentation (although there’s research to come). But it is worth considering the old Yogi Berra saying – “you can observe a lot by watching.”
We are not separate from nature; we come from nature. We are nature. For 99.5% of our species’ history, we lived embedded in the natural world. We actively participated in the community of species in our ecosystems, we were constantly engaged in tasks that were tangible, and easy to get absorbed in: hunting, trapping, foraging (as opposed to staring at spreadsheets). And the natural world was the driving force of our daily life, social life, and spiritual life.
So, like the proverbial “fish out of water” – isn’t it quite possible that this disconnect can lead to what we can only refer to as “nature deficit disorder” with symptoms such as longing, loneliness, boredom, angst, and feeling like we’ve lost touch with the sort of life force?
In Voice of the Earth: An Exploration of Ecopsychology Theodore Roszak makes this same case. Roszak writes – “What the modern cultural environment has required of us is an enormous extroversion of attention and energy for the purpose of reshaping the Earth into a global industrial economy. For two centuries we have been subordinating the planet and our deepest personal needs to that project. This great act of collective alienation, I have suggested, lies at the root of both the environmental crisis and individual neurosis. In some way, at some point, a change of direction, a therapeutic turning inward, had to take place within a culture as maniacally driven as ours has been by the need to achieve and conquer.”
Suffice to say there’s an argument to be made for looking to the natural world when it comes to understanding what is not going so well and what could make us healthier. That’s where the research comes in.
There is an emerging arrow of research suggesting that nature can heal and sustain when it comes to well-being.
Forest bathing, also known as Shinrin-yoku or forest therapy, has been extensively examined in scientific literature for its role in enhancing both physical and psychological health. A meta-analysis conducted in 2017, which reviewed 64 papers, found that forest-based interventions benefit cardiovascular health, bolster the immune system, and improve mental health by alleviating stress, depression, anxiety, and negative emotions. (1)
A 2022 meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials found that forest therapy produced a significant reduction in symptoms of depression. (2) Another meta-analysis from the same year reported large and statistically significant improvements in mental health, particularly for anxiety and depression outcomes. (3)
Additionally, a 2019 meta-analysis focusing on cortisol – a biomarker of stress – found that forest bathing significantly lowered salivary cortisol levels compared to urban control settings, suggesting a robust short-term stress reduction effect. (4) A further review of urban residents, pooling 21 studies on blood pressure and 13 on cortisol, confirmed that forest therapy significantly reduces both blood pressure and stress, though results showed considerable variability. (5)
Taken together, the evidence suggests that nature immersion, particularly through forest-based activities, can act as a non-pharmacological intervention to support well-being. These interventions yield measurable psychological benefits like improved mood and reduced anxiety and depression as well as physiological gains like lowered stress hormones and enhanced cardiovascular function.
That said, researchers emphasize that differences in intervention type, duration, participant characteristics, and environmental context contribute to differences in outcomes. This underscores the need for more standardized, rigorously designed trials. But the existing body of research strongly supports nature as a reliable pathway to improved happiness and health.
For a deeper look into the research literature, visit: anft.earth/research/.
Application: Practices for Connecting with Nature
Again, drawing from Micah Mortali’s work in Rewilding, these are 10 steps to incorporate the natural world into your mindfulness, spiritual, or health practice.
If you live in a rural area, consider a short daily practice. If your location or schedule does not permit, start with a couple hours per week in a green space.
Intimacy – Get to know the land through first-hand experience. Simply spending time in a natural environment consistently can deepen your connection to nature.
Centering – Try to slow down, limit distractions, and give yourself permission to be without having to do anything.
Breathing – Practice some form of conscious breathing to reconnect with the present. The simplest practice is “breathing in I, know I am breathing in; breathing out, I know I am breathing out.”
Gratitude – Adopt an attitude of thankfulness for this moment, this experience, and this opportunity to be at home in nature.
Embodiment – Consider some intentional movements or warm ups to get out of your head (thoughts) and into your body and senses. You can gently circle your neck followed by your shoulders, arms, torso twists, hip circles, knee circles, then rolling your ankles. Smile.
“Fox Walk” – Try mindful walking. Imagine creeping through the forest like a mountain lion or fox. Feel into each and every step. Notice your body and surroundings as you go. Try it barefoot if able.
Sensory Expansion – There is an Eastern term called “samyama” which is a psychological state of absorption. It feels as though you have sort of dissolved into the present moment. Tap into the sights, sounds, smells, and sensations around you.
Sit Spot – Find a spot to sit down on the ground, on a log, on a bench, etc., and just sit as you savor the nature around you.
Bush Craft – As you go deeper into nature-related practices consider adopting a craft or hobby like woodworking, building shelters, fire making, etc.
Fire Circle – Get outdoors in this intentional style with a group of family or friends. Sit in a circle and enjoy one another’s company.
In summary, get outside. Bring intention to your time in nature – to rest, recover, and reconnect with your experience of the natural world. You’ll be happy you did.
References
Song, C., Ikei, H., & Miyazaki, Y. (2016). Physiological effects of nature therapy: A review of the research in Japan. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 13(8), 781.
Hansen, M. M., Jones, R., & Tocchini, K. (2017). Shinrin-yoku (forest bathing) and nature therapy: A state-of-the-art review. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 14(8), 851.
Kotera, Y., Richardson, M., & Sheffield, D. (2022). Effects of shinrin-yoku (forest bathing) and nature therapy on mental health: A meta-analysis. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 934441.
Antonelli, M., Barbieri, G., & Donelli, D. (2019). Effects of forest bathing (shinrin-yoku) on levels of cortisol as a stress biomarker: A systematic review and meta-analysis. International Journal of Biometeorology, 63(8), 1117–1134.
Song, Y., et al. (2022). The effects of forest therapy on blood pressure and stress hormone levels in urban residents: A meta-analysis. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(15), 9203.
Appendix III: Mental Formations & Metacognition
“Thinking about your thinking is the most important kind of thinking.” – Nicholas Cole
When Nicholas said this, he was talking about refining your intellectual perspective as you become a writer. He didn’t realize he stumbled upon some brilliant life advice.
Most people don’t appreciate the full meaning of our species’ name: Homo Sapiens Sapiens. Homo Sapien means “knowing man” or “wise man.” So homo sapiens sapiens is something like “man who knows he knows” or “man aware of being aware.”
This is called metacognition – awareness, observation, and understanding of one’s own cognitive processes. This is important because it helps us to identify and subsequently exert more control over the psychological states that we inhabit.
To this point, Buddhism has a useful bit of terminology. I read that in many Buddhist-influenced languages (like Tibetan), they often don’t have words equivalent to what we would call “emotion” or “thought”. Instead they have a term that is something like “mental formation.” This is an occurrence or manifestation of mindstuff so to speak. It acknowledges that pretty much every thought is imbued with emotion and every emotion imbued with thought. The modern psychological counterpart to this parlance is what we might call mental patterns.
Psychologist Dick Schwartz explains mental patterns are more than just thoughts; they are “discrete clusters of related mental processes” that link together memories, emotions, perceptions, and behaviors.
These mental formations and mental patterns that create our perception are not so easy to control or shut off. So the important thing is to be able to step back and hold them in awareness. Another meditation analogy is the mindstuff being a waterfall and this awareness being the small space behind the waterfall.
Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh shares a story about the importance of bringing awareness to these perceptions.
There was a young married couple in Vietnam who just had a baby.
Sadly, the husband was drafted and had to serve for three years. When he came back from the war he was so happy to be reunited with his beloved. She greeted him at the door with their young child in her arms. They were full of love and happiness.
That day they went to the market. While they were there, the dad was surprised because his young child would not call him “dad”. The child said, “You are not my dad. My dad comes home every night. He sits with mom on the bed and they cry together. Then when mom lies down they lie down together.”
In just that moment, the dad’s heart sank to his shoes. He was in disbelief. He did not talk to his wife.
They returned home from the market and he would not even look at her. They never spoke. He left home and drowned his sorrows at the bar.
And on the fourth day, overwhelmed with grief, his wife threw herself into the river.
When he heard the news he returned home that night. He lit a lamp in his child’s room. The child shouted out – “there, there is my dad!” and pointed to the shadow on the wall.
“Dad comes home every night. He sits with mom on the bed and they cry together. Then when mom lies down they lie down together.”
This illustrates the suffering that can come from failing to see mental formations and patterns for what they are: creations of the mind.
Thich Nhat Hanh claims that the Buddha said to ask yourself, “Are you sure of your perceptions?” He suggests you write it down on a card and post it somewhere where you see it every day.
As is often the case, I find it interesting that modern psychology aligns with this ancient contemplative practice.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a form of psychological treatment that has been demonstrated to be effective for a range of problems including depression, anxiety disorders, alcohol and drug use problems, marital problems, eating disorders, and severe mental illness. (1) Many studies suggest CBT leads to improvement in functioning and quality of life – in many cases it is as effective as, or more effective than, other forms of therapy or psychiatric medications.
The first principle of CBT is psychological problems are based, at least in part, on faulty or unhelpful ways of thinking that lead to learned patterns of unhelpful behavior. These biases and faults in our thinking are called cognitive distortions. So treatment usually consists of efforts to identify and reconcile cognitive distortions. Recall, thinking about your thinking as I shared at the outset. The key is learning to recognize one’s cognitive distortions, reevaluate them in light of reality, and reshape them as needed to move forward.
So it goes that if we can identify cognitive distortions, we are on our way to more happiness.
It turns out there are many universal cognitive distortions: common mental formations and patterns that cause you to perceive reality inaccurately. To that end I’ll present to you a brief “glossary of misery” – the most common cognitive distortions to look out for. This comes from David Burns, MD – a renowned expert on mental health treatment. (2)
Jumping to Conclusions – You assume something negative or positive without real evidence. This distortion comes in two common forms:
Mind-Reading: You assume you know what others are thinking or feeling.
Negative Example: You’re at a party feeling shy and think, “Everyone can tell how awkward I am. They’re judging me.”
Positive Example: You assume a relationship is going great, even though the other person is secretly frustrated or pulling away.
Fortune-Telling: You predict the future as if it’s guaranteed.
Negative Example: “I’ll bomb my presentation. I just know I’ll freeze up.”
Positive Example: “I’ll just have one drink or one cookie — I can stop there.” But your past behavior shows you usually don’t.
All-or-Nothing Thinking – You view situations in extreme, black-and-white categories. There’s no room for nuance or “gray areas.”
Negative Example: “I missed one deadline — I’m a total failure at my job.”
Positive Example: “I nailed that project — I’m unstoppable!” You may feel superior or inferior in ways that aren’t realistic or sustainable.
Overgeneralization – You draw sweeping conclusions based on a single event. One bad moment becomes a sign of an ongoing pattern.
Negative Example: “They didn’t text back — nobody ever likes me. I’m always getting ignored.”
Positive Example: You feel good for a few days and think, “I’m finally cured! I’ll feel this way forever.” You ignore the ups and downs of real life.
Labeling – Instead of describing behavior, you assign global, negative or positive labels to yourself or others.
Negative Example: “I gave into temptation — I’m a loser with no discipline.”
Positive Example: “I won that board game — I’m such a genius!” This may sound harmless, but it can lead to issues with egotism.
Emotional Reasoning – You treat your feelings as evidence for the truth. But feelings are often based on distorted thoughts, not reality.
Negative Example: “I feel hopeless — that must mean things really are hopeless.”
Positive Example: “I feel lucky — I just know I’m going to win big tonight at the casino.” Emotions drive your assessments instead of facts.
Should Statements – You push yourself or others with rigid expectations and rules. These “shoulds” often lead to guilt, resentment, or frustration.
Self-Directed Shoulds
Negative Example: “I should be more productive — what’s wrong with me?”
Positive Example: “I deserve a drink — I’ve had a hard day.” You justify indulgence as a reward, even if it backfires.
Other-Directed Shoulds:
Negative Example: “That guy shouldn’t cut me off in traffic! I’ll show him.”
Positive Example: “People should see things my way — I have the right values.”
World-Directed Shoulds:
Negative Example: “It shouldn’t be raining — this ruins everything.”
Positive Example: “The world should work how I expect it to.”
Discounting the Facts – You dismiss evidence that doesn’t support your belief, whether it’s good or bad.
Negative Example: You receive a compliment and think, “They’re just being nice — they don’t mean it.”
Positive Example: “I’ll only have one bite” — even though this story has never ended with just one bite.
Magnification and Minimization – You blow things out of proportion or shrink them down inappropriately.
Negative Example: Looking at your to-do list, you think, “This is impossible! I’ll never get it done.” Everything feels overwhelming.
Positive Example: When tempted to eat ice cream while dieting, you think, “This will taste amazing — totally worth it.” You minimize the guilt and discomfort that usually follow.
Mental Filter – You fixate on one aspect of reality, good or bad, and ignore the rest.
Negative Example: A speaker receives 99 compliments and one critique. They obsess over the single negative comment and ignore the good.
Positive Example: “This person I have a crush on is so perfect,” you overlook some potential problematic parts of the relationship.
Blame – You assign fault entirely to yourself or someone else, overlooking complexity.
Negative Example (Self-Blame): “It’s all my fault. I mess everything up.” You punish yourself instead of solving the problem.
Positive Example (Other-Blame): “This fight is all their fault — I did nothing wrong.” You feel like the victim and don’t take accountability for your part.
Use your metacognition to bring awareness to your mental formations and patterns, looking out for the common cognitive distortions. Can you notice any of them at play?
Practice this, and you may find more peace of mind and peace from mind.
References
American Psychological Association. (n.d.). What is cognitive behavioral therapy?
Find his work at FeelingGood.com
Appendix IV: Engagement (Flow)
While you can think of the many positive (and of course negative) psychological states possible in any given moment, the concept of engagement, or “flow,” is somewhat distinct.
This refers to a state that is not necessarily “good or bad” but more a feeling of absorption. When you become one with your activity, time slips away, and you lose your sense of “self” – this is flow.
And it seems this, too, brings happiness…
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is a psychologist who pioneered the concept of flow states (watch his TED talk “Flow, the secret to happiness” for more).
He grew up in war-torn Europe, where he observed that many adults were unable to live meaningful, happy lives after losing their jobs, homes, and security during World War II. This early experience led him to ask what makes life worth living. He explored philosophy, religion, and the arts but eventually discovered psychology, almost by accident, after attending a lecture by Carl Jung in Switzerland.
Early in his research, he made a surprising discovery. While material wealth has dramatically increased in the U.S. since the 1950s, levels of happiness have not. Once basic needs are met, further material gain does not seem to significantly increase well-being. Realizing this, Csikszentmihalyi turned his research toward moments in everyday life when people feel truly happy. He began by interviewing creative professionals – composers, artists, scientists, etc. – who described moments of deep engagement in their work. Their testimonies didn’t highlight fame or fortune but emphasized that the activity itself felt intrinsically meaningful and satisfying.
He found that during these moments, people often described a feeling of “ecstasy” – not in the euphoric sense, but in the original Greek meaning: stepping outside oneself.
This led him to outline the concept of the flow state – an immersive state wherein one dissolves into their present activity. When in flow, attention is so fully absorbed in the activity that you lose awareness of time, self, and even bodily needs. The composer he interviewed said it felt as if his hand moved by itself as he led the orchestra. Csikszentmihalyi explains this neurologically: our brain can only process about 110 bits of information per second, so when we’re deeply focused, there’s simply no bandwidth left to be self-conscious.
Flow isn’t limited to artists. Athletes, executives, writers, monks, and even friends in good conversation may experience similar states. Across professions and cultures, Csikszentmihalyi found that flow arises when seven conditions are met:
intense focus (often leading to an altered perception of time),
a merging of action and awareness,
loss of self-consciousness,
a sense of control,
clear goals,
immediate feedback,
and a balance between challenge and skill.
Think of playing your favorite sport against a gold medalist or a 5-year-old (neither is very engaging). But if you have the right balance, you are getting immediate feedback (based on the score and the movements of the other player). You have clear goals (e.g., score points), a sense of control, loss of self-consciousness (e.g., you’re focused on hitting the ball), and a merging of action and awareness with intense focus. Finally, the activity is rewarding in and of itself.
He suggests that one path to happiness is structuring more of daily life so it falls within the “flow channel.” This requires increasing our skills or taking on greater challenges so that our attention is fully engaged. It may also mean setting aside time for creative works, hobbies, and activities that pull you into a state of absorption.
Appendix V: Spirituality & Religion
I must admit that I’m surprised by what I’m about to write.
Most of my life, I’ve been mostly unconvinced and in some cases even somewhat opposed to religion (in my angsty teen years). But as I grow older I feel more guided by the spirit of genuine inquiry and the search for truth, as it were, when it comes to understanding the nature of happiness.
And as psychologist William James said, “The truth is what works.”
So here it goes – I’m not going to tell you which religion, faith, or spirituality is right for you. But I will tell you, to maximize happiness, you should have some.
If you’re skeptical, please read on.
Research reporting from the Harvard Human Flourishing Program makes a compelling case for the role of faith in happiness.
Large longitudinal studies suggest that religious service attendance has numerous positive effects on well-being such as reductions in all-cause mortality, depression, suicide, and more. (1)
These findings are supported by several meta-analyses including a 2022 project by researchers at the Human Flourishing Program and the Initiative on Health, Spirituality, and Religion at Harvard, under the leadership of Dr. Tracy Balboni. Their systematic review of the relationship between religion and health was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. It showed religious participation was beneficial with respect to longevity, depression, suicide, smoking, drug use, alcohol abuse, and various aspects of quality of life and well-being. (2)
Beyond this research, we can look to some more anecdotal accounts from giants of psychology who seem to have observed a similar picture. In How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, Dale Carnegie cited psychologists Carl Jung and William James as advocates for faith, spirituality, or religion in the good life.
William James said that “faith is one of the forces by which men live.” In his Varieties of Religious Experience he proposes that believing in something, especially one’s ability to achieve a difficult task, can actually help make it true. He believed that faith can motivate individuals to take action, persevere through challenges, and, in doing so, create the very outcomes they envisioned. He also argued that faith, particularly religious faith, could be a powerful motivator for ethical and moral action.
Above all, he ascribed a pragmatic value to faith, spirituality, and religious practice: that it is not necessarily an end in itself (although, if you are a devout believer, it may be), but it is an end to something else: namely, a better life. James observed that it bore beneficial “fruits” – like sense of purpose, contentment, resilience in suffering, and a greater tendency for moral action.
Along those same lines, Carl Jung observed that he had treated hundreds of patients for psychological issues, and the common root of their pathology was lacking a spiritual or religious orientation towards the world. And the common denominator of all those who made a recovery was adopting such an orientation.
So, again, I do not want to prescribe to you a certain religion, creed, or tradition. Our discussion simply centers on research and expert experience that suggest that religion is a useful “tool” in cultivating happiness.
So perhaps “tool” is a good word. I don’t say that in a condescending way. But in the same way that a business philosophy can be a tool for navigating an economic environment. Or the same way a map can help you arrive at a destination. Perhaps a religion, spiritual tradition, or sort of faith can be a psychological buffer and – especially if you have some organized, faith-based community around it – a relationship-building mechanism to promote a better life.
In today’s world, many of us de facto worship cultural values, political ideals, and what we see as objective facts. For many, money, power, status, political dogma, etc. have become their religion.
David Foster Wallace illustrates this point brilliantly in This is Water.
[I]n the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship–be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles–is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness. Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful, it’s that they’re unconscious. They are default settings.They’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that’s what you’re doing.
The problem is these secular ideals, as David Foster Wallace points out, often lead us down fruitless rabbit holes, and they don’t have a lot to say about how we should behave or our place in the universe. Perhaps our sort of “secular toolkit” is incomplete.
When it comes to a religious, spiritual, or faith-based orientation, we need not know completely why or how it works, simply that it does. But I wager there are some real practical, tangible mechanisms at work here.
First, faith may help you to bear the burdens of life. Rather than you shouldering the weight of suffering yourself, it gives you a broader psychological base to find meaning in it, fight through it, or come to peace with it. In many cases it gives you a sense of relief in turning over those burdens to some greater operative force.
Secondly, humans are meant for connection. On a practical level, faith-based communities and institutions create a pretext of shared values and activities to promote social connection. Even if you just went to a weekly AA meeting or a happiness book club once per week, there is some value in simply having the structured facilitation of social connect. Further, if you are in touch with a greater being of the universe you will have a means of overcoming loneliness and the fear that comes from the absurdity of contemplating being alone in the infinite expanse of space. There is no need to feel alone when you are one with “God”, “the creator”, “the essence”, “divine love”, or whatever you wish to call it.
Finally, I reckon humans are the only living beings that are able to thoroughly conceptualize the future and the concept of self-identity. This gives us the uniquely terrible privilege of being acutely aware of our own mortality. How can one cope with such an absurd predicament as being alive, aware of being alive, and aware that this aliveness will soon end? It is like a fish trapped in a small puddle under the bright sun. Faith in some divine order may offer a way of coping with this.
To close, I’ll offer a broader perspective on faith. If you have the faith of your youth or some tradition (Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Shinto, etc.) that is all well and good. I encourage you to practice it with sincerity and within an organized community of some sort.
If not, perhaps you can carve out some philosophy or thesis that fulfills the following requirements:
(I) you have trust in some higher order power that helps you to cope with lived experiences and feel at peace with your mortality and the many inherent absurdities of the human experience
(II) you have some shared identity and structure to facilitate quality social connection
(III) you have some system for morality and ethical action including what you de facto “worship” and ascribe value to in your daily life
You may consider the universe itself as your God. Or perhaps to you the laws of mathematics or physics have some divine power in them. Or maybe deep ecology which ascribes almost a spiritual bent to our place on planet earth.
I’ll leave you with a final thought from Suzuki Roshi who offers a beautiful passage in Zen Mind Beginners Mind. He talks about believing in nothing.
I found out that it’s necessary, absolutely necessary, to believe in nothing. We have to believe in something which has no form, or no color. Something that exists before any form and colors appear. This is a very important point. Whatever we believe in – whatever god we believe in – when we become attached to it, it means our belief is based on a more or less self-centered idea. If so, it takes time to acquire -- to attain perfect belief, or perfect faith in it. But if you are always prepared for accepting everything which we see is appearing from nothing, and we think there is some reason why some form or color or phenomenal existence appears, then, at that moment, we have perfect composure.
Ultimately, we have all come out of nothing. Infinite forms come out of the vast darkness of space to manifest galaxies. The carbon atoms that compose our bodies were born in the hearts of stars billions of years ago. The words that you’re reading now flowed out of the emptiness of my mind and are now a flashing into your consciousness – reaching out across time and space.
Perhaps you can touch the inherent mysticism, grace, or wonder of beingness. Perhaps the universe itself has some element of what we may call divine or God. And considering this, know that you are the universe too. What else could you be?
You are the universe experiencing itself. And that insight alone may be what faith is all about.
References
Sacks, C. A., et al. (2016). Association between religious service attendance and lower suicide rates among U.S. women. JAMA Internal Medicine, 176(8), 1219–1220. doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2016.2732 | Kim, E. S., & Kawachi, I. (2016). Perceived neighborhood social cohesion and preventive healthcare use. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 50(6), 876–885. doi.org/10.1007/s12160-016-9811-z | VanderWeele, T. J., Li, S., Tsai, A. C., & Kawachi, I. (2016). Association between religious service attendance and lower depression among U.S. women. JAMA Psychiatry, 73(8), 845–851. doi.org/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2016.1243 | Stavrova, O. (2020). Religious attendance and physical health: Evidence from a longitudinal study of middle-aged and older Europeans. International Journal of Epidemiology, 49(6), 2030–2038. doi.org/10.1093/ije/dyaa051
Balboni, T. A., VanderWeele, T. J., Doan‑Soares, S. D., Long, K. N. G., Ferrell, B. R., Fitchett, G., … Koh, H. K. (2022, July 12). Spirituality in serious illness and health: A systematic review and expert consensus. JAMA, 328(2), 184–197. doi.org/10.1001/jama.2022.11086