Imagine you’re in a difficult conversation. The way the other person is talking is starting to get to you and you’re getting a little frazzled. Then, unbidden, a phrase appears in your mind, “compassion is good”. For some reason it sticks with you, you repeat it to yourself as you listen, and it takes root within you. You start to feel a little more open, you breathe a little easier, and your thinking changes. From this humble beginning, the whole conversation goes better than you expected; you feel and behave better. All it took was the right thought at the right time.
What is going on here? How is it that a thought can change the course of a conversation? To explain this, let’s introduce the idea of a cue. A cue is a concept from exercise science, but in our context it means a verbal phrase or image whose presence in the mind changes your behavior.
Let’s look at how it works in exercise: you have a coach/trainer with you while you practice squats. The coach looks at you and notices your weight is too far forward. Instead of describing the exact anatomical change they want, instead a coach will give you a cue such as, “press your heel down”. Perhaps that doesn’t work, so they try another cue, “push through the ground”. You hear that and see some sort of image in your mind as you do the squat, and the coach says, “Yes, that’s it! Keep doing that.”
You’re not sure how, but by thinking this phrase and trying to apply it, something has changed about your movement. You keep doing the squats while repeating the cue and trying to remember the feeling of squatting this way, and then your focus drifts and you forget the cue. And the coach says again, “Push through the ground!” Then you remind yourself to bring back the feeling associated with the cue, and once again the coach says, “That’s perfect.”
This example provides several of the features of a cue. First, a cue is indirect. Somehow, the words the coach said became an image in your mind, which produced a feeling, which changed your movement pattern. This happened without you understanding anything about the intricate anatomy of what you were doing. Somewhat magically, the cue changed things you didn’t have conscious control over. Second, a cue is impermanent. While the image was in mind, it changed the way you moved, but if you forgot to bring it to mind, the pattern could go back to what it was before. Third, a cue is repeatable. You can use it repeatedly to get the same result. Once you use it enough, you might learn to do the thing on your own, just from the feeling.
Cues do not just affect movement. They affect all kinds of mental and emotional behaviors as well. This is important, because you might not be able to get yourself to feel/do something directly, but by using the right cue, you might get yourself to feel/do that thing as a result. This process can feel like magic.
Example: You’re going for a walk, and your mood is rather flat. You notice this and bring to mind an image of golden light, filling you up from within. As this image takes root, a good feeling rises in you and your mood starts to shift upward. Staying with this image and feeling, visualizing the light radiating out from you, you start to smile at the people you see.
A cue could be a phrase or an image, but other mental objects can act as cues. In particular, a narrative or belief can be a cue: in the moment you have it in mind, it changes the way you feel and act in a way that goes beyond any literal thinking or planning. The more you believe it, the more power it has in this way. Thus the belief you’re engaging with always has a value beyond its literal truth. We see this in optimists and pessimists, who pick up on different aspects of the same situation, with opposite emotional results. This is also where a motto or mantra comes from. People find, through their own experience, that some beliefs change the way they feel and act for the better.
If we see all our beliefs and talk in this way, it changes the way we evaluate the sorts of truths we bring to mind. First off, we are unintentionally, habitually cue-ing ourselves all the time. On the other hand, life is full of opportunities to cue ourselves in an intentional way.
Example: You’re trying to put the devices away at night and sleep better. You’re looking at your phone and you feel some resistance to putting the phone away. There’s an opportunity to bring a cue to mind, such as: “Easy to do, easy not to do.” When I’m feeling a subtle resistance or complacency, that cue makes me feel motivated, and maybe a different one is right for you. Remembering that phrase might be the difference between a good night’s sleep and a bad one.
Making use of intentional cues requires an opportunistic attitude. You have to look at each situation as an opportunity to change the way you feel and act. You need to find cues that work for you, and remember them when they are needed. How often do you miss these opportunities?
On the unintentional side, we typically have an enormous volume of internal activity. Sometimes we’re delusional, but fascinatingly, we’re usually saying things that are true in some sense. Even our negative narratives are fixated on specific observations. But here’s the rub: there are a million different things that are true! Why this specific belief at this specific moment? So the question for evaluating mental talk is not, “Is this literally true?” but instead, “How am I cue-ing myself? What kind of feelings and behavior am I encouraging?” Seeing your self-talk in this way totally changes what it means.
We tend to value our thinking as a way of predicting the future, and it can do this, but I challenge you that the vast majority of your thinking has no real benefit to your future actions, and is instead rehashing the past, fantasizing, shadowboxing, or idle speculation. Consider instead the value of thinking for affecting your actions in this present moment.
Exercise: Find a cue that makes your mood a bit better, makes you feel confident, positive, or active. Then experiment with it throughout the day. Repeatedly use it in various ways and observe the results. Does it change the way you feel? When does it fail? Do your actions change as a result of using this cue?
This might all sound incredibly subtle. You may try a cue and feel just a tiny bit different. But actually, in life it is often very subtle feelings and urges, repeated endlessly, which form our behavioral patterns. Thus it's often a very subtle effect that you need to make a difference. The difference between doing and not doing is often very small and a cue can be what gets you over the line.
This is both a wonderful domain of things to experiment with, and also a lens to examine a belief beyond its mere truth-value. And in the end, rather than its predictive power or scientific correctness, “the effect thinking this way has on me” may be the most important thing of all.
