8 Powerful Yet Invisible Forces Driving Your Emotions and Behaviors
And how to develop unshakable equanimity in their midst
Dear friends,
Welcome to another edition of Beyond Self Improvement! If you missed it, here’s last week’s article: Why Independence Isn’t the Ultimate Personal Growth Stage (and What Is)
Today's essay concerns eight powerful yet invisible forces influencing our moods, emotions, and behaviors. If you’re new, please subscribe below to join our growing community and get my next essay in your inbox:
Mark Twain remarked, "The outside influences are always pouring in upon us, and we are always obeying their orders and accepting their verdicts.”
This insight dives deep into the heart of human experience, much like the wisdom shared by the Buddha in the "Eight Worldly Winds." These hidden oppositional forces tremendously influence our lives: gain and loss, pleasure and pain, fame and disrepute, praise and blame.
They're like the weather systems of our psyche, unpredictable and powerful, capable of disrupting our inner peace or throwing us into chaos.
It reminds me of the story "Heaven or Hell” by Stephen Levine. Imagine a man who, after dying, finds himself in an idyllic realm where every desire is instantly gratified. His perfect house appears. His favorite meals are ready on command. Even his ideal sexual, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual partner shows up.
A dream scenario, right?
Yet, as the months pass, he realizes something’s off. Despite having everything he ever wanted, he feels an inexplicable uneasiness. His good fortune hasn’t taken him beyond his desires. He has not dealt with that place within him that only feels comfortable when it gets what it wants. He has not touched the yearning, the root that sometimes makes life so painful—and beautiful. He senses he's feeding this root by indulging all his desires.
And so he wonders if there might not be a place in the universe where he could work on the fears and separateness that have always caused him difficulty. After a while, he goes to the head man and says, "I don't mean to be ungrateful, and this may sound preposterous, but I think I'd like a transfer to hell."
And the head man turns slowly to him, saying, "And where do you think you are?”
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"These eight worldly conditions revolve around the world,” said the Buddha, “and the world revolves around these eight worldly conditions.”
Life is unsteady and constantly changing. And our well-being is profoundly impacted by how we relate to these continually fluctuating polarities.
Let's delve deeper into the Eight Worldly Winds:
Gain and Loss. Our lives include gain and loss, whether material wealth, relationships, or status. Our attachment to gains and aversion to losses can disrupt our inner peace. We can see the transient joy of acquiring something we want and what it’s like to cling to such fleeting experiences.
So much of our lives revolve around acquiring and accumulating and resisting losing and letting go. Think about the last time you got something you wanted, like a cookie or acknowledgment. Recall what it felt like in the body to gain those things, to have that experience.
Usually, we live in a fairy tale, hoping good things will continue. We go into cruise mode when we're gaining and fall asleep. We get into a rhythm with our partner and think, “Finally, it’s going to be smooth.” And then we get ruffled at the slightest misunderstanding. We are forced to look within when faced with the more challenging aspects of the winds of gain and loss.
Fame and Disrepute. Pursuing acclaim and the fear of disgrace drive much of our behavior. This duality can lead us to make decisions from vanity rather than wisdom. Our celebrity culture exemplifies this, where the rise and fall of public figures serve as a cautionary tale about the ephemeral nature of fame.
Our ego often gets entangled in the desire for recognition and the fear of judgment.
Magazines and media put stars on pedestals, only to feast on their downfall when they are found to be imperfect. This cycle of adulation and criticism reflects our fascination with fame and shame, extending to public figures like Jeffrey Epstein and Lance Armstrong, whose reputations swung wildly from glorification to disgrace.
Walmart is the biggest purchaser of organic products but has put countless stores out of business. Starbucks is an excellent company to work for, but many would-be coffee shop owners haven’t been able to compete.
Our fascination with fame reveals our complex relationship with recognition and humiliation.
Praise and Blame. Our desire for approval and fear of criticism can block authenticity. The quest for external validation often detracts from living true to our values.
A recent visit to my dentist made me aware of this dynamic. My dentist praised me for being calm during a filling replacement without anesthesia. When her demeanor abruptly changed from friendly to talking over me, I was reluctant to speak up. Who was I to complain when she had paid me such a generous (if ultimately meaningless) compliment?
The book "The Courage to Be Disliked" discusses the pitfalls of craving praise, using the example of unnoticed efforts at picking up litter at work to highlight how the desire for and lack of recognition can lead to frustration and abandonment of good deeds. It argues that this craving stems from a reward-and-punishment culture, which can cause us to be motivated by others' judgments.
So, the next time someone praises your work on a project or judges your performance harshly, notice how personally you take it. See how much the ego identifies with these experiences. Resting in awareness allows us to see the movement of the winds of praise and blame and remain centered and unswayed by their push and pull.
Pleasure and Pain: Much of our life's energy is spent pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain. This duality showcases the challenges of navigating these opposite forces while remaining grounded.
Being in love or a relationship is a clear example of where we experience both the highest form of pleasure and the deepest source of pain. Parenting is another area. It is a beautiful, wonderful, touching, yet challenging, demanding, and sleep-depriving experience.
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The Buddha's point—and indeed, the lesson from our story—isn't to withdraw from the world or to stop caring about these emotional forces. Instead, it's about developing a kind of mental agility, an ability to stay centered amid life's storms through awareness. It's about finding a space within ourselves that remains calm and centered, no matter what's happening externally.
This way of perceiving doesn't promise a life without challenges or disappointments. It offers something more profound: a way to experience life fully, to embrace its ebbs and flows with openness and resilience. It's about recognizing that while we can't control the winds, we can adjust our sails, learning to travel through life with greater ease and grace.
It's a path of discovery, where the true treasure isn't what we acquire or achieve but the wisdom and peace we find within awareness.
Until next week.
Stay aware,
Ryan
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