英语书籍：The Genius Of Instinct（节选四）

英语书籍：The Genius Of Instinct（节选四）ZT

'Hardwired to Stay'

The biggest barrier to using your shelter seeking instincts is that you are hardwired to be 'loss averse.' Back in the days when your ancestors were hunter-gatherers, for survival it was imperative to hold on to things, such as food and water. Losing them would spell disaster, so people who held on to things gave themselves an advantage for survival. In so doing, they became more and more loss averse. In fact, being loss averse would explain greed and hoarding--why people keep and want more than is functional.

Unfortunately, hundreds of thousands of years later, you still have it in you to be loss averse. That means, it is hard for you--all of us, really--to let things go, even if it is a bad relationship or an unfulfilling job. We tend to cling because we are loss averse (not codependent).

I have asked many people how they knew it was time to make a change in their surroundings, be it a marriage or a job. Here's a summary of response:

* "I was unhappy at work. My assignments weren't very interesting. I felt I needed to leave."

* "I gave the school a chance. I kept telling myself next semester would be different. After five semesters, I finally concluded I was in the wrong environment. I needed to transfer and I did."

* "I left my marriage in order to survive."

* "Nothing was happening for me. It had to be better somewhere else."

When I heard and analyzed each of these responses I noted that underlying each was a sense of despair, a feeling of desperation-- for example, "I had to leave my marriage to survive."

The lesson here is: 'Unless your interaction with the environment is really bad, most likely, you are not going to leave.' (Later, we explore how to make this point work for you.)

Being hardwired to be loss averse, you are more likely to learn how to you use your most basic instinct--self-preservation--and, like an animal, learn how to "adapt" to your environment. Many people do this by lowering their expectations, and many others choose to emotionally insulate themselves from those who surround them. These "self-preservation" strategies help people survive their environment --like an animal--but paradoxically, keep them stuck in an environment that prevents them from thriving.

Humans are not meant to survive like animals; they are meant to thrive. Applying the standards of evolutionary psychology, self- preservation simply by the continuance of physical life (surviving a marriage or a job) is not enough. In human nature, there is something more--a desire for self-development. It is this desire that leads to life enhancement. When someone does not feel that he is in an environment that provides adequate scope for self- expression, he experiences a sense of incompleteness and imperfection, a feeling of quiet desperation. These types of feelings lead people to say, "I feel trapped," with the tag line, "Nothing I can do about it except adapt and survive."

You are not trapped.


'Beyond Self-Preservation'

A recurring and important concept in understanding your evolutionary heritage is 'interaction.' In the context of shelter seeking, it means that you are not pushed around by your environment; you respond to it, you interact with it, and the degree to which you can interact with it effectively is crucial to your success.

One implication of the 'interactive principle' is that 'instead'
of interacting by either 'adapting' by changing yourself, you have the capacity to 'change it,' to 'adjust' the dynamics of your environment so that you can thrive. Indeed, human ingenuity has altered every aspect of our environments to enhance human life--from the invention of agriculture and the domestication of animals, which stabilized the food supply and allowed early man to settle in one area, to science and medicine, which have greatly lengthened the human life span and heightened the quality of life. This active ability allows you to convert a hazardous environment--whether it be a so-so marriage or a boring job--into an empowering environment that helps you grow.

A second implication of the interactive concept, and a 'gigantic'
difference between humans and other mammals, is that humans can and do consciously expose themselves to stimuli that no creature ever would. I doubt your pet dog or cat would voluntarily sit on a roller coaster, or jump off a cliff for sport. Thus, you not only have the capacity to 'leave' a specific environment, you also have the capacity to expose yourself to new and potentially more empowering environments. This instinctual genius allows you to make better choices for the quality of your life, from finding the right mate, to finding the right job. Remember, your ancestors were hunter- gathers. They were on the move, always seeking out an environment that would be more empowering to their clan.

In sum, shelter seeking allows you to move beyond a self- preservation survival mode by helping you either find a more empowering environment or adjust the ones that surround you. In other words, instead of adapting or escaping, Mother Nature would say it is better to seek out or adjust if you want to thrive.

Knowing 'when' to seek out and adjust is next on the shelter-seeking instinctual agenda.


CHAPTER TWO
'The Face of Emotions'

The evolutionary function of emotions is a chief strategic concept, and its implications and applications surface throughout this book, so some details here will also be of value later. It is particularly important, for instance in the context of shelter seeking, to know when it's best for you to 'leave' a particular environment, to know when you are in an environment that is the 'right match' for you, and to know how to use that environment so you can leave a job or relationship that has you trapped.


'Emotional Functioning'

Why do humans have emotions? According to the principles of natural selection, they must give some advantage in helping humans survive.
What is it?

Unlike the majority of the scientists who study the brain as the hardwiring apparatus for emotions, those who consider your evolutionary heritage use a different part of the body, a different hard wiring apparatus that helps them explain the primary functions of emotions. This hardwiring apparatus is known as your 'face.'

The face is the supreme center for sending and receiving social signals crucial for the development of an individual's interpersonal communication and that individual's cohesiveness with family and society.

There is no doubt that facial expressions of emotions have evolutionary-biological significance as a prelude to their psychological and social significance. Contemporary theorists in the field support the belief that facial expressions evolved primarily from 'serviceable associated habits' or 'intention movements'--the incomplete or preparatory phases of activities, such as attack, locomotion, defense, and movements associated with respiration and vision.

During the course of evolution, facial expression developed into a system of social communication that conveys information about the internal states (intentions) of the expresser and alerts fellow creatures to certain aspects of the environment. For example, a fearful face signals the perception of danger and the intention of the organism to flee or submit.