Coach Ted reviews the societal norms and agreements that make up the illusion of conscious will.
The Confines of the Framework and the Illusion of the Conscious Will.
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The Confines of the Framework and the Illusion of the Conscious Will.
Season 4/Episode 40
April 22, 2022
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
This is the Ted O’Neill program where we explore the science and philosophies for performance optimization, and the elevation of the human experience from the mind of Ted O'Neill with Jon Leon Guerrero.
0:24 Jon
Welcome to the Ted O'Neill program. We are in the recap of season four, at the glorious pinnacle of season four, and the third concept that we endeavored in this season was the confines of the framework and the illusion of conscious will.
0:45 Ted
Well yeah. This is where we really started. I mean, the fallacy of the rep-based system can be looked at as a pretty severe paradigm shift. If you really understand the depth of what we're talking about there, and the opportunity, and you are serious about making progress, you would never deviate from that formula, so to speak.
Now, the illusion of conscious will and the confines of the framework is something that's a little bit of a different construct. Daniel Wagner wrote a book, The Illusion of Conscious Will, which is pretty highbrow reading. It's not one that I got through easily. So, I'm going to break this down a little bit. So, I'm going to say… The confines of the framework. What does that mean? I give a pretty in-depth description of what the framework is. And just think of it this way, we're all born into a series of societal norms, spoken and unspoken agreements, various social contracts, etc, etc. It's the way that things are in the world, so to speak. Right? That's the framework. We all experience similar things: you have to get a job so you can pay your rent or your mortgage, you drive a car, you can have a certain lifestyle, all this kind of stuff. And you know, some of the illusion of conscious will is what we think we're making in terms of decisions, but it's really just simply directed through this idea of this framework that we live in.
So, I'm going to tie this back to what we just talked about: the fallacy of the rep-based system. Because then we can make a nice little segue into these two concepts. Let's think about the illusion of the conscious will. So, say, for example, I'm going to sort of piggyback this right into this concept of doing reps. We get into that fatigue or anxiety state. If we have received training, and we know how to perform the movement, and we've demonstrated a certain level of qualification under the barbell that we can, in fact, do this in a certain way. And right before the set, we've made an agreement on how we're going to approach this—then what is it, exactly, that happens when we get under the bar, and then we flail about wildly at the place we call that 90-10 moment, or the access point? So, you had a little bit of this experience (Sure) that we talked about on the show. And everyone has had this. So yours was…
3:18 Jon
But the difference is you keep bringing mine up.
[Laughter]
No, I'm absolutely happy to demonstrate, because we all have related to it. And I reflected on it in that week, and surprisingly got a lot of feedback from people who came to me in the gym and said, “Man, I really needed to hear that, because I have gone through a thing as well.” So we've all done it. And as much training as I have benefited from—and I think of myself as a pretty good trainee; I'm enthusiastic about the material, I try to take it in, learn it, and really absorb it, and then demonstrate it. And in the midst of not only the place where I was demonstrating at that moment, at my highest capacity at that time, and I had all of the circumstances in my favor. Including you coaching me, (Moment by moment) moment by moment, right next to me. Yeah. So really just walking me through this experience. And I just, for some reason, looked down at a place where there were no answers.
4:31 Ted
While you're squatting. (While I was squatting.) Weights on your back. You had just executed your best three or four, I mean, flawless repetitions. Totally locked into the groove. (And felt them.) And felt them. (Yeah.) So, this is what happened. So, you know, we could ask the question, “Well, what happened?” And right then, right after we got it, we got a chance to process, because to me, I saw exactly what happened. But I wanted to get your feedback. And you were in the space of, “Man. I don't know.” (Yeah.)
So, here's where my belief stands on this thing. Because much of this comes down to things we've talked about with great regularity that, you know, is a little bit of an offshoot of some of the work that some pretty great scientific minds have done, like Bruce Lipton, Dr. Joe Dispenza—people who have really taken these concepts of neuroscience, or cellular biology, or epigenetics, and gone into new places with this.
We know that the brain works in a certain way. And that's for, really, the first developmental years as a child. Our brain is just recording the world around us and all the experiences we have. Since we're in a certain brainwave state, it's like a record. Yeah, we record these events and we consider those to be fact. So that shapes the basis of over 90% of our personality as an adult. And it's said that 95%—and again, I think that number is very conservative; I think it's more like 99.9%—of the time, as adults, with this shaped personality from an early age. We've simply replayed the same subconscious programs, or the same way of thinking, over and over again.
So, in other words, the brain can be looked at as a machine of association. And—I’m confronted with a circumstance: an event or a situation, or even new information. And the first thing my brain says is, “How does this apply to what I already know?” And that's what we call a decision-making process.
Now, let's think about this for a second. If—we've just recorded information from a time when we were very young, or had an imprint or a traumatic event that shaped us, and now all other decisions are going through that lens. If there's anyone else who can have a similar experience and a completely different (Outcome), a completely different outcome, reaction, or response, then that opens up some really big questions, as to, then, what is really going on in that situation. In fact, MIT published a paper a couple of years ago that says objective reality does not exist. Does not exist.
So, this forms the basis of some pretty big problems, right, structurally, as human beings. If we view life only through the lens of our initial imprints and our subconscious programming, then we are going to be repeating things through the lens of that limitation. Forever. (We have nothing but colored lenses.) Yeah. So if we're, if we're doing an exercise, for example, and we're, in that case, you were nailing it perfectly—you would overcome some of the challenges you're working on. So much so, with a new weight, so much so that what I believe is going on there is your brain is saying, “This is not who I am. This was not how I performed this.” So, you didn't have a couple bad reps at the end where maybe you cut the squat a little bit high—you would, you would fall into the deep end of the pool. Looked down, shifted your weight completely into the wrong place so much so they actually tweaked your back on that rep. We had to pull it off. (Yeah.)
So that creates the regression toward the mean, because you got to take a week off or something and kind of gradually step back up into this thing. So, it wasn't going back to what you used to do. In fact, you had to fall back prior to that, something that was demonstrably worse than your prior normal. So that's actually pretty predictable behavior. And that's what Wagner would call the illusion of conscious will in that moment. You volitionally looked down, but why?
Because there’s, like you said, you looked down—there was nothing that was going to help you. (Yeah, there were no answers.) So, we had previously said, “Yes, my stated goal is to get this many reps, and I'm locked into this concept.” And then as we near the finish line, we take it all away from ourselves. And we're doing so, presumably, because we're in a belief system that is not matching our current output: that maybe we're not as conscious as we think.
This, to me, is such a huge fundamental piece of the human experience. This is why we talk about it so much, because people say, “Yeah, but that doesn't happen to me.” Well, give me about 30 seconds of talk, and I'll tell you exactly where it's happening. So, we've gone to enormously great lengths to decode this in a practical sense, and one of the key curricula that comes out of Diablo Barbell is the Emotional Sobriety Training, where that gives you an opportunity to create an entirely new belief system and practices. It's a series of precise and clear-cut directions that guides you through not only identifying who you've been and where those thoughts came from, but a clear and concise manner on how to completely eradicate the entirety of the old belief system. So, one of the ways I described this is—did we ever use the puzzle analogy on this show? (Yeah.) We did?
10:12 Jon
We did, this season. We talked about a 1000-piece puzzle, which—if you had the leisure time of completing a 1000-piece puzzle, everybody can relate to—you start at the corner. You work your way down the edge, maybe.
10:27 Ted
Yeah, so here's kind of a fun deal with this. I had one of our members, Gary Pazinski. He's a math guy. And he heard me ask a question, you know, somebody tell me how many potential starting places there are on a 1000-piece puzzle, and he, and he did this. Yeah, he brought this sheet in, which was an 8x11 page. That was just numbers. Right? Right, just numbers, and then dot dot dot the end. In other words, there's an infinite number—a seemingly infinite number of potential starting places. You can start in the corner.
10:56 Jon
Yeah, it was 1000 times the 1000 pieces that were left at this, you know, and then that times 999 and he walked it all the way through, and it was multiplication every time you made a decision on a piece, and that's how many variables there are. And yet, it's the same puzzle when you're done.
11:19 Ted
It's the same puzzle no matter where you start. If you complete it, the picture looks the same, So, then…
11:26 Jon
It’s still dogs playing pool.
[Laughter]
11:29 Ted
Right, or whatever your 1000-piece puzzle is.
11:32 Jon
Do they make other ones besides dogs playing pool?
11:32 Ted
They must. (Okay.)
So, we go through our lives in a very similar way. And we try all these different iterations of starting with different pieces. We call those circumstances. And we try to start the corner, we try and start in the middle—we call those situations. And you know, when that's not working, then we jump over somewhere else because we're stuck over here. So now I'm going to go over here and I’m going to mess with these pieces. I find some things that link up, maybe jobs that we have, or relationships, but in the end, it's the same thing no matter where we start.
So, this is what I believe Wagner is getting at, in his book, is that we go through these machinations of all these different things that we appear to be doing. And we're saying, “This is going to be different, and here's how.” But in the end, we arrive at the same place. So my contention is, armed with that information, armed with the fact that over 95% of the time, we are really living our lives through echoes of the past. Then there would have to be a way, if we can become aware of that, that we can change that.
0:24 Jon
Welcome to the Ted O'Neill program. We are in the recap of season four, at the glorious pinnacle of season four, and the third concept that we endeavored in this season was the confines of the framework and the illusion of conscious will.
0:45 Ted
Well yeah. This is where we really started. I mean, the fallacy of the rep-based system can be looked at as a pretty severe paradigm shift. If you really understand the depth of what we're talking about there, and the opportunity, and you are serious about making progress, you would never deviate from that formula, so to speak.
Now, the illusion of conscious will and the confines of the framework is something that's a little bit of a different construct. Daniel Wagner wrote a book, The Illusion of Conscious Will, which is pretty highbrow reading. It's not one that I got through easily. So, I'm going to break this down a little bit. So, I'm going to say… The confines of the framework. What does that mean? I give a pretty in-depth description of what the framework is. And just think of it this way, we're all born into a series of societal norms, spoken and unspoken agreements, various social contracts, etc, etc. It's the way that things are in the world, so to speak. Right? That's the framework. We all experience similar things: you have to get a job so you can pay your rent or your mortgage, you drive a car, you can have a certain lifestyle, all this kind of stuff. And you know, some of the illusion of conscious will is what we think we're making in terms of decisions, but it's really just simply directed through this idea of this framework that we live in.
So, I'm going to tie this back to what we just talked about: the fallacy of the rep-based system. Because then we can make a nice little segue into these two concepts. Let's think about the illusion of the conscious will. So, say, for example, I'm going to sort of piggyback this right into this concept of doing reps. We get into that fatigue or anxiety state. If we have received training, and we know how to perform the movement, and we've demonstrated a certain level of qualification under the barbell that we can, in fact, do this in a certain way. And right before the set, we've made an agreement on how we're going to approach this—then what is it, exactly, that happens when we get under the bar, and then we flail about wildly at the place we call that 90-10 moment, or the access point? So, you had a little bit of this experience (Sure) that we talked about on the show. And everyone has had this. So yours was…
3:18 Jon
But the difference is you keep bringing mine up.
[Laughter]
No, I'm absolutely happy to demonstrate, because we all have related to it. And I reflected on it in that week, and surprisingly got a lot of feedback from people who came to me in the gym and said, “Man, I really needed to hear that, because I have gone through a thing as well.” So we've all done it. And as much training as I have benefited from—and I think of myself as a pretty good trainee; I'm enthusiastic about the material, I try to take it in, learn it, and really absorb it, and then demonstrate it. And in the midst of not only the place where I was demonstrating at that moment, at my highest capacity at that time, and I had all of the circumstances in my favor. Including you coaching me, (Moment by moment) moment by moment, right next to me. Yeah. So really just walking me through this experience. And I just, for some reason, looked down at a place where there were no answers.
4:31 Ted
While you're squatting. (While I was squatting.) Weights on your back. You had just executed your best three or four, I mean, flawless repetitions. Totally locked into the groove. (And felt them.) And felt them. (Yeah.) So, this is what happened. So, you know, we could ask the question, “Well, what happened?” And right then, right after we got it, we got a chance to process, because to me, I saw exactly what happened. But I wanted to get your feedback. And you were in the space of, “Man. I don't know.” (Yeah.)
So, here's where my belief stands on this thing. Because much of this comes down to things we've talked about with great regularity that, you know, is a little bit of an offshoot of some of the work that some pretty great scientific minds have done, like Bruce Lipton, Dr. Joe Dispenza—people who have really taken these concepts of neuroscience, or cellular biology, or epigenetics, and gone into new places with this.
We know that the brain works in a certain way. And that's for, really, the first developmental years as a child. Our brain is just recording the world around us and all the experiences we have. Since we're in a certain brainwave state, it's like a record. Yeah, we record these events and we consider those to be fact. So that shapes the basis of over 90% of our personality as an adult. And it's said that 95%—and again, I think that number is very conservative; I think it's more like 99.9%—of the time, as adults, with this shaped personality from an early age. We've simply replayed the same subconscious programs, or the same way of thinking, over and over again.
So, in other words, the brain can be looked at as a machine of association. And—I’m confronted with a circumstance: an event or a situation, or even new information. And the first thing my brain says is, “How does this apply to what I already know?” And that's what we call a decision-making process.
Now, let's think about this for a second. If—we've just recorded information from a time when we were very young, or had an imprint or a traumatic event that shaped us, and now all other decisions are going through that lens. If there's anyone else who can have a similar experience and a completely different (Outcome), a completely different outcome, reaction, or response, then that opens up some really big questions, as to, then, what is really going on in that situation. In fact, MIT published a paper a couple of years ago that says objective reality does not exist. Does not exist.
So, this forms the basis of some pretty big problems, right, structurally, as human beings. If we view life only through the lens of our initial imprints and our subconscious programming, then we are going to be repeating things through the lens of that limitation. Forever. (We have nothing but colored lenses.) Yeah. So if we're, if we're doing an exercise, for example, and we're, in that case, you were nailing it perfectly—you would overcome some of the challenges you're working on. So much so, with a new weight, so much so that what I believe is going on there is your brain is saying, “This is not who I am. This was not how I performed this.” So, you didn't have a couple bad reps at the end where maybe you cut the squat a little bit high—you would, you would fall into the deep end of the pool. Looked down, shifted your weight completely into the wrong place so much so they actually tweaked your back on that rep. We had to pull it off. (Yeah.)
So that creates the regression toward the mean, because you got to take a week off or something and kind of gradually step back up into this thing. So, it wasn't going back to what you used to do. In fact, you had to fall back prior to that, something that was demonstrably worse than your prior normal. So that's actually pretty predictable behavior. And that's what Wagner would call the illusion of conscious will in that moment. You volitionally looked down, but why?
Because there’s, like you said, you looked down—there was nothing that was going to help you. (Yeah, there were no answers.) So, we had previously said, “Yes, my stated goal is to get this many reps, and I'm locked into this concept.” And then as we near the finish line, we take it all away from ourselves. And we're doing so, presumably, because we're in a belief system that is not matching our current output: that maybe we're not as conscious as we think.
This, to me, is such a huge fundamental piece of the human experience. This is why we talk about it so much, because people say, “Yeah, but that doesn't happen to me.” Well, give me about 30 seconds of talk, and I'll tell you exactly where it's happening. So, we've gone to enormously great lengths to decode this in a practical sense, and one of the key curricula that comes out of Diablo Barbell is the Emotional Sobriety Training, where that gives you an opportunity to create an entirely new belief system and practices. It's a series of precise and clear-cut directions that guides you through not only identifying who you've been and where those thoughts came from, but a clear and concise manner on how to completely eradicate the entirety of the old belief system. So, one of the ways I described this is—did we ever use the puzzle analogy on this show? (Yeah.) We did?
10:12 Jon
We did, this season. We talked about a 1000-piece puzzle, which—if you had the leisure time of completing a 1000-piece puzzle, everybody can relate to—you start at the corner. You work your way down the edge, maybe.
10:27 Ted
Yeah, so here's kind of a fun deal with this. I had one of our members, Gary Pazinski. He's a math guy. And he heard me ask a question, you know, somebody tell me how many potential starting places there are on a 1000-piece puzzle, and he, and he did this. Yeah, he brought this sheet in, which was an 8x11 page. That was just numbers. Right? Right, just numbers, and then dot dot dot the end. In other words, there's an infinite number—a seemingly infinite number of potential starting places. You can start in the corner.
10:56 Jon
Yeah, it was 1000 times the 1000 pieces that were left at this, you know, and then that times 999 and he walked it all the way through, and it was multiplication every time you made a decision on a piece, and that's how many variables there are. And yet, it's the same puzzle when you're done.
11:19 Ted
It's the same puzzle no matter where you start. If you complete it, the picture looks the same, So, then…
11:26 Jon
It’s still dogs playing pool.
[Laughter]
11:29 Ted
Right, or whatever your 1000-piece puzzle is.
11:32 Jon
Do they make other ones besides dogs playing pool?
11:32 Ted
They must. (Okay.)
So, we go through our lives in a very similar way. And we try all these different iterations of starting with different pieces. We call those circumstances. And we try to start the corner, we try and start in the middle—we call those situations. And you know, when that's not working, then we jump over somewhere else because we're stuck over here. So now I'm going to go over here and I’m going to mess with these pieces. I find some things that link up, maybe jobs that we have, or relationships, but in the end, it's the same thing no matter where we start.
So, this is what I believe Wagner is getting at, in his book, is that we go through these machinations of all these different things that we appear to be doing. And we're saying, “This is going to be different, and here's how.” But in the end, we arrive at the same place. So my contention is, armed with that information, armed with the fact that over 95% of the time, we are really living our lives through echoes of the past. Then there would have to be a way, if we can become aware of that, that we can change that.
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