1. End-gaining.
F.M.Alexander wrote extensively about the distinction between what he called end-gaining and means-whereby. Quoting from his 1946 book, "The Universal Constant In Living",
The concept of "end-gaining" then naturally evolved to include various kinds of irrational behavior characterized by excessive preoccupation with the end to be gained which, ironically, is often counterproductive and defeats its own purpose. A manager at a company is under pressure to save money and, in a hurried decision, he does it by laying off several key employees. While the end has been gained, the long-term consequences have not been taking into account. The company ends up losing so much more. As another example, a woman becomes obsessed with the idea that she needs to become more attractive, even though her friends may be telling her otherwise. She works really hard saving money for a plastic surgery, then chooses a clinic for the operation based on a luring commercial, and ends up with less-than-satisfactory result. In this case she did not consider if the means that she chose for achieving her goals were the best ones --- such as using this particular clinic, and doing plastic surgery in the first place. She also did not consider if the goals, in fact, were what she wanted to pursue. Perhaps her deeper goal was getting married, and acting on the instinct --- even the first step of deciding to increase her attractiveness --- proved very inefficient and, in fact, counterproductive.
My teacher Mark pointed out on numerous occasions that end-gaining is different from having goals. After all, the manager could reasonably want to save money, or the woman could want to get married, or to become more attractive. It is the way the go after these goals --- the direct way, without consideration of the consequences and without reasoning out the best means-whereby --- that makes their actions end-gaining. But how do we recognize this distinction? How do we know if we are end-gaining, or if we are actually moving towards our goals? (A million-dollar question worth a front-page publication in Forbes.)
Here is my answer. First of all, the ability to set goals is uniquely human (maybe except for a few monkeys; I believe that dogs and cats and birds and fish don't have such an ability). Whenever we are setting goals, especially consciously formulated goals, we are using some higher-level mental mechanisms. For now just keep it in mind.
2. Inhibition.
Next, because we are, after all, animals, we have our wonderful animal heritage. We have this incredible instinctive process of doing things, of reacting to the environment. A healthy human can do a lot of things without really thinking. (Here I view it as a blessing.) If you are hungry, you naturally do something to alleviate that, whatever you learned to do, or your parents or your TV program taught you to do. If you are tired, you naturally do something to alleviate that, which may involve going to sleep or going to the nearest Dunkin Donuts for another cup of coffee. As you may have guessed, the latter may be considered end-gaining, if you have a habit of getting coffee whenever you are tired. This may serve you well if you are an analyst on Wall street, but so long as you are going directly for the end, acting on instinct, this still qualified as end-gaining, which is not the same as carefully considering the available options, then still deciding to go get a coffee.
It is possible to go through much of our lives acting "by feeling", by relying on this instinctive process of doing things. You will be learning from your own mistakes, though not from the mistakes of others. If you drink too much coffee and end up getting sick, then next time the very sight of coffee would be disgusting, so you'd drink less. If you don't end up getting sick, or if you don't draw a connection between not feeling well and substituting coffee for sleep, then you will not learn, and maintain the same behavior. The connection has to be well imprinted for the instinctive mechanism to work: getting in a car accident because of drinking too much may be enough of a shock to stop drinking; merely worrying won't be enough.
In order to choose some other response, one that is not instinctive, the first step is inhibition. Our animal heritage, this instinctive method of doing things, is so robust, so strong, serves us so well, that we absolutely have to inhibit the instinctive action before we can do something else. Here the word "inhibit" can be taken in the regular biological sense. If one action is already, automatically, under way, in order to do something else we have to override it with another, stronger intention and/or deliberately inhibit the original impulse by making it weaker. For example, the manager from the example above can take a couple of days to think the matters through very thoroughly. This will weaken the end-gaining desire to save money at any cost and, consequently, will also weaken the automatic response --- the layoff --- allowing for other solutions to be considered. Note that there is often a clear moment of inhibition, when the manager has to almost force himself to not do anything at the moment.
3. Pseudo-goals.
Finally, the reason we need to inhibit early and to inhibit often, is that the mind likes to create pseudo-goals. Remember that goal-creation is a high-level activity? Well, the instinctive process is a low-level activity, and it is generally unsuitable for reaching sophisticated goals. End-gaining is unsuitable for reaching goals, in principle. Our animal heritage, our subconscious mind, is just not smart enough to figure out the best way to lose weight, or to get a job, or to get married. It just isn't; the task is way too complicated. What, I believe, happens instead, is that the instinct is to pursue a pseudo-goal, derived from the original goal. The pseudo-goal is to feel that we are getting closer to the original goal.
The manager wants to save money. The intent he puts into his own organism is so strong, that the organism is really trying to make him feel that he is saving money, that he is moving towards saving money. Thus, he is engaging in an irrational behavior of laying off his key employees, because this is the closest way to making him feel like he is saving money. Without conscious control, without engaging higher-level thinking facilities, this is the best he can do for moving towards this goal. End-gaining does not work satisfactorily for such sophisticated goals; only conscious control does. The woman in the example feels that she is moving towards becoming more attractive by saving money for plastic surgery. Again, her mind substituted "feeling that she is moving towards becoming more attractive" for "becoming more attractive". This pseudo-goal is, upon closer consideration, not worth pursuing. It is only because she never stops for this closer consideration and keeps relying on instinctive "feeling" that she fails to realize that her efforts are misdirected.
4. The awakening.
A great deal of all human behavior is irrational, and for the same reason: people trying to achieve their goals in an end-gaining way, instinctively, without reasoning out the means, and pseudo-goals are getting substituted for goals. Countless industries have been built around this fact. People buy fast food to satisfy hunger and to save time, and even beggars asking for money would often go and get a meal at Mc'Donalds, even though soda and fries are hardly a wise way to apply their hard-earned money. People play computer games on their phone because they want to relax after sitting in front of a computer all day long. People clip coupons, feeling they need to save money, but end up buying more and thus spending more. The story of "Febreeze", presented in "The power of habit" by Charles Duhigg, is a very compelling example. It turns out that, when people are cleaning, they don't want the house to be clean as much as the want the house to feel clean, or to feel that it became cleaner.
End-gaining works: people eat their fries and they get fed; they spray their houses with "Febreeze" and... well, at least they get motivated to clean more often. But you are paying the price: you get out of shape because of all this junk food, you have no time for anything or anyone important because you are so busy pursuing your pseudo-goals, most of your spare money goes towards the things you think you need, which are often again pseudo-goals, and so forth. Also, more often than not, end-gaining does not lead you to achieving the actual goals. People quit diets, quit exercise programs, forget resolutions, and stay at bad jobs and in bad relationships.
The only way is to use our higher-level mental facilities. USE YOUR BRAIN! In Alexander's terms, the first step is awareness. I already wrote about it in the post on computer middleware. You have the ability to notice the impulses, to notice how your life is governed by your habits and by the pursuit of pseudo-goals. Develop this ability. Second, apply the inhibition to stop the end-gaining response and to consider the best means for achieving the goal, and whether the goal is worth it in the first place. It is essential to understand that this is a different mode of thinking than simply going with the flow. Even one minute, even 10 seconds of reflection can make all the difference, because a different, a higher level mental process is involved. Stop for 10 seconds and consider if you like your life, your job, the relationship you are in, and so forth, and what you can rationally do about it. Lastly, the third step is direction. After inhibiting the instinctive response and reasoning out the best means for the goal, and also the best goal to pursue in the first place, you now need to project these new directions while continuing to inhibit the habitual response. This is also a higher-level activity. If you want to stay committed to pursuing your goal, you need to keep using higher-level mental processes. Otherwise, the old, habitual responses will take over.
When applied to long-term personal goals, the exact same ideas were formulated by Alan Lakein, most famous for "What is the best use of my time right now?" Notice that this is a very high-level question involving high-level mental processes and a great deal of awareness and inhibition. His methods, such as writing down short-, medium-, and long-term goals, follow the exact same principles: constantly inhibiting the instinctive desire to just go with the flow of life, and instead constantly using higher-level mental processes for bringing yourself back on track, as well as regularly using your high-level thinking and planning capabilities for setting and resetting goals.
Whatever method you use is not important. Use whatever works for you --- Alexander technique, Lakein's time management, mindfulness meditation. Perhaps your parents taught you some similar skills; perhaps you found these insights in your religion. But do use something. As a self-test, you should be well familiar with the feeling when you have an impulse to do one thing, and then you override this impulse or let it pass and, under careful consideration, choose to do another thing. This is the beginning of awakening.
F.M.Alexander wrote extensively about the distinction between what he called end-gaining and means-whereby. Quoting from his 1946 book, "The Universal Constant In Living",
One famous example that he gave was that of a stutterer. A stutterer is trying not to stutter, but once that bad habit has already been established, the more he tries, the worse it gets. At this point he has to stop trying, inhibit the habitual response, and instead reason out the best means-whereby for accomplishing his end. (Compare this to focal dystonia.) Another example was that of the Alexander himself. When he was trying to solve his voice troubles, he thought it was enough to just "try harder" in order to change the way in which he was speaking. Eventually he had to resort to an indirect procedure that started from inhibiting his habitual response, then substituting new and improved means by projecting the appropriate directions, while continuing to inhibit the old response.
These terms stand for two different, nay, opposite conceptions and for two different procedures. According to the first or end-gaining conception, all that is necessary when an end is desired is to proceed to employ the different parts of the organism in the manner which our feeling dictates as necessary for the carrying out of the movements required for gaining the end, irrespective of any harmful effects due to misuse of the self during the process; a conception which implies the subordination of the thinking and reasoning self to the vagaries of the instinctive guidance and control of the self in carrying out the activities necessary to achieve the end.
It will be seen therefore that end-gaining involves the conception and procedure of going direct for an endwithout consideration as to whether the "means-whereby" to be employed are the best for the purpose, or as to whether there should be substituted for these, new and improved "means-whereby" which, in their employment, would necessarily involve change in the manner of use of the self.
The concept of "end-gaining" then naturally evolved to include various kinds of irrational behavior characterized by excessive preoccupation with the end to be gained which, ironically, is often counterproductive and defeats its own purpose. A manager at a company is under pressure to save money and, in a hurried decision, he does it by laying off several key employees. While the end has been gained, the long-term consequences have not been taking into account. The company ends up losing so much more. As another example, a woman becomes obsessed with the idea that she needs to become more attractive, even though her friends may be telling her otherwise. She works really hard saving money for a plastic surgery, then chooses a clinic for the operation based on a luring commercial, and ends up with less-than-satisfactory result. In this case she did not consider if the means that she chose for achieving her goals were the best ones --- such as using this particular clinic, and doing plastic surgery in the first place. She also did not consider if the goals, in fact, were what she wanted to pursue. Perhaps her deeper goal was getting married, and acting on the instinct --- even the first step of deciding to increase her attractiveness --- proved very inefficient and, in fact, counterproductive.
My teacher Mark pointed out on numerous occasions that end-gaining is different from having goals. After all, the manager could reasonably want to save money, or the woman could want to get married, or to become more attractive. It is the way the go after these goals --- the direct way, without consideration of the consequences and without reasoning out the best means-whereby --- that makes their actions end-gaining. But how do we recognize this distinction? How do we know if we are end-gaining, or if we are actually moving towards our goals? (A million-dollar question worth a front-page publication in Forbes.)
Here is my answer. First of all, the ability to set goals is uniquely human (maybe except for a few monkeys; I believe that dogs and cats and birds and fish don't have such an ability). Whenever we are setting goals, especially consciously formulated goals, we are using some higher-level mental mechanisms. For now just keep it in mind.
2. Inhibition.
Next, because we are, after all, animals, we have our wonderful animal heritage. We have this incredible instinctive process of doing things, of reacting to the environment. A healthy human can do a lot of things without really thinking. (Here I view it as a blessing.) If you are hungry, you naturally do something to alleviate that, whatever you learned to do, or your parents or your TV program taught you to do. If you are tired, you naturally do something to alleviate that, which may involve going to sleep or going to the nearest Dunkin Donuts for another cup of coffee. As you may have guessed, the latter may be considered end-gaining, if you have a habit of getting coffee whenever you are tired. This may serve you well if you are an analyst on Wall street, but so long as you are going directly for the end, acting on instinct, this still qualified as end-gaining, which is not the same as carefully considering the available options, then still deciding to go get a coffee.
It is possible to go through much of our lives acting "by feeling", by relying on this instinctive process of doing things. You will be learning from your own mistakes, though not from the mistakes of others. If you drink too much coffee and end up getting sick, then next time the very sight of coffee would be disgusting, so you'd drink less. If you don't end up getting sick, or if you don't draw a connection between not feeling well and substituting coffee for sleep, then you will not learn, and maintain the same behavior. The connection has to be well imprinted for the instinctive mechanism to work: getting in a car accident because of drinking too much may be enough of a shock to stop drinking; merely worrying won't be enough.
In order to choose some other response, one that is not instinctive, the first step is inhibition. Our animal heritage, this instinctive method of doing things, is so robust, so strong, serves us so well, that we absolutely have to inhibit the instinctive action before we can do something else. Here the word "inhibit" can be taken in the regular biological sense. If one action is already, automatically, under way, in order to do something else we have to override it with another, stronger intention and/or deliberately inhibit the original impulse by making it weaker. For example, the manager from the example above can take a couple of days to think the matters through very thoroughly. This will weaken the end-gaining desire to save money at any cost and, consequently, will also weaken the automatic response --- the layoff --- allowing for other solutions to be considered. Note that there is often a clear moment of inhibition, when the manager has to almost force himself to not do anything at the moment.
3. Pseudo-goals.
Finally, the reason we need to inhibit early and to inhibit often, is that the mind likes to create pseudo-goals. Remember that goal-creation is a high-level activity? Well, the instinctive process is a low-level activity, and it is generally unsuitable for reaching sophisticated goals. End-gaining is unsuitable for reaching goals, in principle. Our animal heritage, our subconscious mind, is just not smart enough to figure out the best way to lose weight, or to get a job, or to get married. It just isn't; the task is way too complicated. What, I believe, happens instead, is that the instinct is to pursue a pseudo-goal, derived from the original goal. The pseudo-goal is to feel that we are getting closer to the original goal.
The manager wants to save money. The intent he puts into his own organism is so strong, that the organism is really trying to make him feel that he is saving money, that he is moving towards saving money. Thus, he is engaging in an irrational behavior of laying off his key employees, because this is the closest way to making him feel like he is saving money. Without conscious control, without engaging higher-level thinking facilities, this is the best he can do for moving towards this goal. End-gaining does not work satisfactorily for such sophisticated goals; only conscious control does. The woman in the example feels that she is moving towards becoming more attractive by saving money for plastic surgery. Again, her mind substituted "feeling that she is moving towards becoming more attractive" for "becoming more attractive". This pseudo-goal is, upon closer consideration, not worth pursuing. It is only because she never stops for this closer consideration and keeps relying on instinctive "feeling" that she fails to realize that her efforts are misdirected.
4. The awakening.
A great deal of all human behavior is irrational, and for the same reason: people trying to achieve their goals in an end-gaining way, instinctively, without reasoning out the means, and pseudo-goals are getting substituted for goals. Countless industries have been built around this fact. People buy fast food to satisfy hunger and to save time, and even beggars asking for money would often go and get a meal at Mc'Donalds, even though soda and fries are hardly a wise way to apply their hard-earned money. People play computer games on their phone because they want to relax after sitting in front of a computer all day long. People clip coupons, feeling they need to save money, but end up buying more and thus spending more. The story of "Febreeze", presented in "The power of habit" by Charles Duhigg, is a very compelling example. It turns out that, when people are cleaning, they don't want the house to be clean as much as the want the house to feel clean, or to feel that it became cleaner.
End-gaining works: people eat their fries and they get fed; they spray their houses with "Febreeze" and... well, at least they get motivated to clean more often. But you are paying the price: you get out of shape because of all this junk food, you have no time for anything or anyone important because you are so busy pursuing your pseudo-goals, most of your spare money goes towards the things you think you need, which are often again pseudo-goals, and so forth. Also, more often than not, end-gaining does not lead you to achieving the actual goals. People quit diets, quit exercise programs, forget resolutions, and stay at bad jobs and in bad relationships.
The only way is to use our higher-level mental facilities. USE YOUR BRAIN! In Alexander's terms, the first step is awareness. I already wrote about it in the post on computer middleware. You have the ability to notice the impulses, to notice how your life is governed by your habits and by the pursuit of pseudo-goals. Develop this ability. Second, apply the inhibition to stop the end-gaining response and to consider the best means for achieving the goal, and whether the goal is worth it in the first place. It is essential to understand that this is a different mode of thinking than simply going with the flow. Even one minute, even 10 seconds of reflection can make all the difference, because a different, a higher level mental process is involved. Stop for 10 seconds and consider if you like your life, your job, the relationship you are in, and so forth, and what you can rationally do about it. Lastly, the third step is direction. After inhibiting the instinctive response and reasoning out the best means for the goal, and also the best goal to pursue in the first place, you now need to project these new directions while continuing to inhibit the habitual response. This is also a higher-level activity. If you want to stay committed to pursuing your goal, you need to keep using higher-level mental processes. Otherwise, the old, habitual responses will take over.
When applied to long-term personal goals, the exact same ideas were formulated by Alan Lakein, most famous for "What is the best use of my time right now?" Notice that this is a very high-level question involving high-level mental processes and a great deal of awareness and inhibition. His methods, such as writing down short-, medium-, and long-term goals, follow the exact same principles: constantly inhibiting the instinctive desire to just go with the flow of life, and instead constantly using higher-level mental processes for bringing yourself back on track, as well as regularly using your high-level thinking and planning capabilities for setting and resetting goals.
Whatever method you use is not important. Use whatever works for you --- Alexander technique, Lakein's time management, mindfulness meditation. Perhaps your parents taught you some similar skills; perhaps you found these insights in your religion. But do use something. As a self-test, you should be well familiar with the feeling when you have an impulse to do one thing, and then you override this impulse or let it pass and, under careful consideration, choose to do another thing. This is the beginning of awakening.
