Book 229 - A Year of Magical Learning (Part 4/5)

Reflection Title: Disgust – when you may be onto a new core value to explore!

Book – The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom by Jonathon Haidt (Part 4 / 5)

Book Description: The Happiness Hypothesis is a book about ten Great Ideas. Each chapter is an attempt to savor one idea that has been discovered by several of the world's civilizations—to question it in light of what we now know from scientific research, and to extract from it the lessons that still apply to our modern lives and illuminate the causes of human flourishing. Award-winning psychologist Jonathan Haidt shows how a deeper understanding of the world's philosophical wisdom and its enduring maxims—like "do unto others as you would have others do unto you," or "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger"—can enrich and transform our lives.

Reflection:

There is nothing more natural and seemingly effortless than discovering your core values by looking at activities you already love to do and digging deeper into the why behind what makes you feel that way when you perform that activity.

It is easy, just pick something you naturally find yourself always enjoying, explore the emotions, and how they make you feel. Ask yourself the questions like - Why do I love this activity? How do I feel when performing that activity? If I had to distill that feeling / emotion down to a single word or phrase, what would that be?

This is how you find your values!

I’ll give you an example, I love tennis, but why?

I love tennis because I’m constantly challenged, mentally and physically, on the court. I love tennis because I get to be outside, playing in nature, and moving my body. I love tennis because of the opponent that is simultaneously a friend and competitor. I love tennis because I always learn something about myself and the game after each match where my head is filled with questions and ideas of how I can improve. I love tennis because I know I’m not the best and will never be the best. I love tennis because at some point in every match I want to quit and I keep pushing.

Distilling all that down, I love tennis because of the CHALLENGE, LEARNING, HUMILITY, NOT DOING IT ALONE, PLAYING, ENDURING, and BALANCE it provides my life.

BOOM…look at all those values I just found!

Examining what you naturally love is one way to discover values, but just like everything in life, there is another end of the spectrum you should explore as well on your values quest…that is DISGUST!

I never really thought about how powerful that disgusting feeling can be in guiding our actions until after reading the Happiness Hypothesis. The author goes into a deep dive as to importance of disgust and how it has shaped cultures and activities throughout humanity.

It made me think about how I feel about disgust. I like to think of disgust as that feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when you know something is wrong, but aren’t sure exactly what? You know what I’m saying? That disgusting feeling bubbles up from deep inside you and you feel shame and regret. An example in tennis is when you mistakenly call a ball out that was in. It was an accident, you want to pipe up and change it, but you don’t and move on. That disgusting feeling won’t leave and then begins to dominate your mind.

Disgust helps you to discover activities that you don’t want in your life.

More than a few times on this Year of Magical Learning Journey, I’ve had that feeling of disgust with something I did or said. Deep down in my core I knew it didn’t feel right and it prompted me to ask myself…why do I feel this way? My first inclination was to judge the activity that provided the feeling of disgust and filter it through my current values to see if violating one of them was the cause. It turns out that wasn’t it at all. I then looked at my purpose, why, and did the same thing. Again…nothing. I could find no logical reason why these activities were generating this feeling of wrongness and disgust in the pit of my stomach.

I started to think, maybe this disgusting feeling is actually some whole new value that I need to explore on its own and see where it leads me? So that is exactly what I did, I followed the same framework I did above with activities I love, but this time used the activities that were causing the disgusting feeling in the pit of my stomach.

After distilling it all down, I was left with a brand-new value of Integrity!

Integrity is now officially my newest core value. Integrity is my most unique core value as it wasn’t discovered by embracing what brought me joy, like all the rest of my values. Integrity was discovered by examining the opposite end of the spectrum and taking a deep dive at the activities that brought me a feeling of disgust, like calling the ball out when it was in.

Emotions and values are tied together. You can’t find your values without exploring your emotions, and that means ALL OF YOUR EMOTIONS…good and bad. Don’t neglect your friend “disgust” while on your own quest or you may be missing out.

Question: What activities naturally make you have that disgusting feeling? What values are they guiding you toward?

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Links:

What is The Year of Magical Learning? - An Introduction

YOML Podcast Discussion - Coming Soon

YOML Bookstore - The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom by Jonathon Haidt