This is the fifth and final part in my sequence of essays about my life philosophy, Valuism – here are the first, second, third, and fourth parts.

In previous posts, I’ve described Valuism – my life philosophy. I’ve also discussed how it could serve as a life philosophy for others. In this post, I discuss how a Valuist lens can help shed light on various fields and areas of inquiry.

Valuism and Effective Altruism

Effective Altruism is a community and social movement about “using evidence and reason to figure out how to benefit others as much as possible, and taking action on that basis.”

Effective Altruists often operate from a hedonic utilitarian framework (trying to increase happiness and reduce suffering for all conscious beings). But Effective Altruism can alternatively be approached from a Valuist framework.

You can think of Valuist Effective Altruism as addressing the question of how to effectively increase the production of one’s altruistic intrinsic values within the time, effort, and focus you give to those values (as opposed to your other intrinsic values). If you’re an Effective Altruist, chances are two of your strongest intrinsic values are related to reducing suffering (or increasing happiness) and seeking truth.

For people with certain intrinsic values, Effective Altruism is a natural consequence of Valuism. To see this, consider a Valuist whose two strongest values are the happiness (and/or lack of suffering) of conscious beings and truth-seeking. Such a Valuist would naturally want to increase global happiness (and/or reduce global suffering) in highly effective ways while seeing the world impartially (e.g., by using reason and evidence to guide their understanding). This is extremely aligned with (and similar to) the mission of Effective Altruism.

For more on the relationship between Effective Altruism and Valuism, see this post.

Valuism and existential risk

Potential existential risks (such as threats from nuclear war, bioterrorism, and advanced A.I.) are a major area of focus for many Effective Altruists. According to most people’s intrinsic values, existential risk is also incredibly bad. Existential risks threaten many of the things that humans value (happiness, pleasure, learning, achievement, freedom, longevity, legacy, virtue, and so on). So for most people’s intrinsic values, Valuism is compatible with caring about existential risk reduction (depending on one’s estimates of the relevant probabilities).

Valuism and utopias

Utopias are hard to construct. Sure, we pretty much all want a world without poverty and disease, but it’s hard to agree on the specific details beyond avoiding bad things. If we go all-in on one intrinsic value, we end up with a world that seems like a dystopia to many. For instance, a utopia, according to hedonic utilitarianism, might look like attaching each of our brains to a bliss-generating machine while we do nothing for the rest of our lives, or it might look like or filling the universe with tiny algorithms that experience maximal bliss per unit of energy. Of course, these are horrifying outcomes for many people.

If we maximize utopia according to one or a small set of intrinsic values, it will very likely seem like a dystopia according to someone with other intrinsic values. To construct a utopia that is not a dystopia to many, we should make sure that it includes high levels of a wide range of intrinsic values, keeping these in balance rather than going all-in on a small set of values.

Put another way, if we preserve a wide range of different intrinsic values in our construction of potential utopias, we protect ourselves against various failure modes. For instance:

• The intrinsic value of avoidance of suffering protects us from a world where there is a lot of pain and suffering.
• The intrinsic value of freedom helps protect us from a failure mode of a world of forced wireheading. 
• An intrinsic value of truth helps protect us from a failure mode where we’re all unknowingly in the matrix (e.g., being used for a purpose unknown to us) or living under an authoritarian world government that tries to keep the populace happy through delusion.

Valuism and worldviews

Worldviews usually come with a set of shared intrinsic values. These are the strong intrinsic values that most (though not all) people with that worldview have in common. Of course, in most cases, in addition to these shared intrinsic values, each individual will also have other intrinsic values that are not shared by most people with their worldview. You can learn more about the interface between worldviews and intrinsic values in our essay on worldviews here.

Valuism and mental health 

Mental health may have interesting connections to intrinsic values. For instance, here’s an oversimplified model of anxiety and depression that I find usefully predictive (I developed this in collaboration with my colleague Amanda Metskas):

Anxiety occurs when you think there is a chance that something you intrinsically value may be lost. Anxiety tends to be worse when you perceive the chance of this happening as higher, when you perceive the intrinsic values as more important, or when the potential loss is nearer in time.

Depression occurs when you’re convinced you can’t create sufficient intrinsic value in your future. This could be because you think the things you value most are lost forever, because you see yourself as useless at achieving what you value, or for other reasons.

Valuism and animals

What do animals care about? While some animals (e.g., some insects) may not be conscious (i.e., they may lack something that it’s like to be them), and therefore it may not matter what they care about, for conscious animals, it may be important to understand what they intrinsically value so we know how to treat them ethically.

An intrinsic value perspective on animal ethics is that we should not deprive animals of the things they intrinsically value (and we should help them get the things they intrinsically value, at least when they are easy to provide). So, for instance, we can ask how much a chicken that lives almost its whole life in a small cage (as many chickens raised for food in the U.S. do) is able to have its intrinsic values met. The answer is probably very little.

But what are the sorts of things that animals may intrinsically value? I suspect there are a wide variety of animal intrinsic values and that they depend on species, but here are a few that may be especially common in mammals:

• Pleasure
• Not suffering
• Not experiencing large amounts of fear, stress, and anxiety
• Surviving
• Agency (e.g., the ability to choose)
• Bonding with other animals
• Protection of their offspring

Valuism and economics

Economics often operates under the assumption that each person has a “utility function”: i.e., a function that maps states of the world into how good or bad the person thinks those states are and that describes the choices people make. According to this frame, if a person chooses A over B, that means that their utility function assigns a higher value to A than B. For example, if I buy a Mac rather than a PC, and they are the same price, this must mean that I predict the Mac gives me more utility (according to my utility function). 

Valuism, on the other hand, says that when A is more intrinsically valuable to us than B (and equivalent along other dimensions such as price), we often will choose A over B because A produces more of what we intrinsically value; however, sometimes we choose B over A instead because we confuse instrumental value with intrinsic value, or we have a habit of doing B, we feel social pressure to do B, etc.

In other words, choosing something is not the same as intrinsically valuing something, and ideally, we want to construct a society where people get more of what they intrinsically value, not merely giving people more of what they would choose. 

A classic example where intrinsic value and choice come apart is addictive products like cigarettes or video games with upsells: people sometimes choose to pay for them and use them way past the point of benefit, according to their own intrinsic values.

A similar issue comes up when people slip into treating every dollar of GDP or each unit reduction of “deadweight loss” as though they are equally valuable. Imagine that an influencer gets all the hottest celebrities to start wearing the hair of a rare species of sloth and that buzz convinces millions of people that it’s really cool, so consumers spend billions of dollars buying these sloth hair pieces. Unfortunately, the sloth hair is really aesthetically ugly, uncomfortable, and expensive, and making clothes out of it requires torturing the sloths. This will probably increase GDP, yet (on net) intrinsic value will almost certainly have been destroyed. There is no good reason to care about GDP for its own sake, but intrinsic values are precisely the things we care about for their own sake. While increasing GDP may often be aligned with producing more of what people intrinsically value (both now and potentially in the future), in cases when GDP and the long-term production of intrinsic values are out of alignment, I would argue that GDP is no longer a good measure of societal benefit.

Going back to the sloth hair example, having a free market for this sloth hair would, according to simple economic theory, reduce “deadweight loss” (relative to having restrictions on their sale). And yet, the production of this sloth hair will likely be net destructive to what people intrinsically value. We can imagine a multi-faceted accounting of how society is doing that takes into account productivity and wealth but goes beyond it to consider the extent to which people are creating their intrinsic values; productivity and wealth would be viewed as being in the service of intrinsic value production.

As a complement to GDP, we can think about measuring how well the people of a society get the things that they intrinsic value. For instance, attempting to measure:

• How happy are they? 
• To what extent are they accomplishing their goals? 
• How free are they?
• How meaningful are their relationships? 
• How much are they suffering?

This is related to the Human Development Index, though that index includes items that are not intrinsic values, and it doesn’t cover all intrinsic values.

If we had such an accounting, different people would naturally rank societies differently (in terms of how good they are overall) because they value these intrinsic values to different extents.

As you can see in this post, a Valuist perspective may have something to say about many other topic areas, giving us a different way to look at topics like Effective Altruism, utopia, animal ethics, worldviews, mental health, and economics.

You’ve just finished the fifth and final part in my sequence of essays on my life philosophy, Valuism – here are the first, second, third, and fourth parts.

I’ve noticed that it’s quite common for people to struggle to know what they should do to support friends or family members going through a mental health challenge, and it’s also quite common to say counterproductive things in such situations.

With the aim of helping you better help those people in your life who are struggling, here’s a list of five things that are usually a *bad* idea to say to someone who is dealing with a mental health challenge, along with seven things it usually is a *good* idea to do in such cases.

Part 1: things that are usually a *bad* idea to say to someone who is going through a mental health challenge

1. “Just think positively.”

For most mental health challenges, the problem is not a lack of positive thinking, and even if it were, being told to “think positively” would not enable them to actually be able to do so. This advice also trivializes people’s problems and so can come across as quite annoying or condescending.

2. “Focus on everything you have to be grateful for. Other people don’t even have enough food to eat!”

While it may be true that their life objectively has a lot of good things in it, their mental health challenge is not going to go away just by observing that. Gratitude can be a very useful mindset, but it is not a solution to mental health challenges, and being told to be grateful for what you have can lead to feelings of guilt (e.g., “I’m such a screw-up that I can’t even be happy when I have all these good things!”)

3. “You have to choose to be happy.”

It’s extremely rare that people choose to have a mental health challenge, and very few people, if any, know how to take the ongoing action of “choosing” to be happy. This framing of “choice” can also come across as though you are blaming the person for their mental health challenge, which is likely to be counterproductive.

4. “Today is the first day of your new life!”

This assumes that they can suddenly break out of their old patterns by reframing their life as starting anew, but this is a very unrealistic assumption. 

5. You should read “The Secret”/”The Power Of Positive Thinking” (or similar books)

These are in a genre of books that tell you that your problems are the result of not thinking the right way and that if you just start to think differently (e.g., imagine yourself succeeding and believe it with certainty), you will suddenly start to have the life you want. These techniques usually do not work for people with mental health challenges and can leave the reader feeling blamed for how they feel.

Part 2: things that usually *ARE* helpful to do with someone who is struggling with their mental health:

1. Ask open-ended questions about how they’re feeling and what they’re experiencing, without pushing them to reveal more than they’re comfortable with. Listen carefully. Try to really understand what they are going through.

2. Learn about the condition. Reading a book or two about the condition they are struggling with, or talking to an expert about it, can help you better understand what the other person is dealing with and can improve your ability to support them in helpful ways. Keep in mind, however, that their manifestation of the condition may differ from the typical manifestation, so be careful about jumping to conclusions about what they must be experiencing.

3. Empathize with them and show compassion. Don’t blame them for what they’re experiencing. And don’t use their struggles as an excuse to spend a lot of time talking about your own struggles. Though if you have been through similar challenges, they may appreciate knowing that.

4. Encourage them (with gentleness and compassion) to seek professional help (e.g., an excellent psychologist or psychiatrist). If they’re struggling to get started, ask permission to assist, and if they agree, reduce the effort for them (for instance, by trying to track down an excellent professional and provide them with the contact info). Thankfully, most people will improve when they are given evidence-based treatment that is carried out by a competent mental health professional (though it may take a few tries and failures to find a treatment that works well).

If they aren’t willing to see a therapist, you can ask if they would be up for reading a book that is specifically designed to help people who have mental health challenges. If they agree, you can research what the best book is on the topic and buy it for them.

For instance, many people have benefited from the David Burns books Feeling Good (for depression) and When Panic Attacks (for intense fears, such as social anxiety and phobias). Chronic worriers may benefit from The Worry Cure by Robert Leahy. For people who are mean to themselves (e.g., engaging in negative self-talk), the book Self-Compassion (by Kristin Neff) may be useful. For people who have very intense emotions or who have Borderline Personality Disorder, The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook by Matthew McKay may be useful.

If the person expresses openness to it, you may also want to encourage them to engage in other healthy behaviors that may be beneficial (such as eating healthy food, walking outside daily, and getting regular exercise at the gym). It’s ideal if you can make these behaviors easier for them, such as by offering to go to the gym with them three times per week or by buying them a healthy meal delivery plan as a gift (with their permission, of course).

5. Avoid advice until they are ready to hear it. In an attempt to be helpful, people are often much too quick to give advice, which can be very frustrating to the receiver (especially when the advice-giver doesn’t really understand the circumstances well). The time to give advice is after you have done a lot of listening and when the other person has indicated that they would like your advice. If you aren’t sure if they want advice, you may want to ask something like, “Would it be helpful if I gave you some suggestions now for how to do X, or would that not be useful at the moment?” Of course, once they are ready for advice, you should absolutely give it. When you do give advice, try to make it clear when you are confident in what you’re saying versus when you aren’t as sure (and they may want to consult someone else, such as a mental health professional).

6. Do nice things for them that you know (based on past experience with the person) they’re likely to appreciate – whether it’s spending more time together, sending a random compliment, reminding them you love them, giving an extra hug, planning a fun activity for the two of you (that they feel well enough to enjoy), or offering to help them clean their apartment. What matters, of course, is what they would actually appreciate in their current state, not what you would appreciate if you were them, and not what they would appreciate if they weren’t in their current condition.

7. Make your help sustainable. Remember that it is not your job to “fix” this person’s mental health, nor will you be able to do so. Mostly, you can only help someone when they WANT to be helped and only in ways they are WILLING to be helped. It’s also important that you take care of yourself in the process. This person may have a mental health challenge for a long time, so (other than in cases of acute crises where extra action is needed), it’s not a good idea to extend yourself in a way that will not be sustainable. Don’t jeopardize your relationship with this person by taking on more than you can realistically handle, which could lead you to experience burnout or resentment. Just because someone is experiencing a mental health challenge does not mean you should let them violate your boundaries. If the person is acting in a way that is harmful to you, it’s important that you clearly assert your boundaries to prevent yourself from being harmed (while you continue to help in whatever ways you can, without giving up on those boundaries).

Conclusion

Everyone is different, so it’s always possible someone would benefit from items in the “bad” list above or dislike items in the “good” list. But I believe that following these guidelines will, more often than not, make you more effective at helping the people you love.

In summary, as a friend/family member, your job is to provide love, empathy, and the level of support that you can sustainably manage. Avoid giving shallow suggestions such as to “think positively.” Instead:

• ask open-ended questions

• learn about their condition

• empathize with their experience

• encourage the person to get high-quality professional help

• avoid giving advice (until they want it)

• do nice things

• make your help sustainable

This piece was first written on January 8, 2023, and first appeared on this site on May 28, 2023.

Here is a list of “feeling-based” strategies that may help you get started on what you have trouble getting yourself to do:

If you are feeling:

1. unsure of where to start-> think of three really small, simple, actionable steps that would constitute a small amount of progress, but those steps in their most natural order, then start on the first of those steps

2. a lack of motivation -> make a list of all the reasons you care about this project and why it is meaningful or worth working on (if you can’t think of good reasons, maybe you should just drop the project), read this list back to yourself, and then get started.

3. too tired, during daytime -> try my “cool reboot” method (see: http://bit.ly/2Ehhy7N – just do whichever parts of the method that you are able to do wherever you are) then start working on the project immediately after.

4. too tired, during late evening -> go to sleep and set the alarm to wake up early, add another alarm on your phone to remind you to start the project shortly after you wake up.

5. overwhelmed by the magnitude of the project -> on paper, break the project down into large (at least mostly) independent pieces, then take the first of those pieces (the one that it would make sense to start working on next) and break that piece down into smaller (at least mostly) independent pieces, and so on, until you can start to see how you might actually accomplish the different small pieces since none of them seems impossibly large.

6. ambiguity about what the project actually is -> write down a first draft description of the project, making the description as concrete as you can manage (but don’t worry about filling in every detail), send this description to any collaborators you have for their feedback (if you have any collaborators), then get started working on any part of your concrete description that feels actionable.

7. overwhelmed by how many different things you need to do for the project -> pick the three easiest things to do that would still count as progress on the project, then start working on whichever of the three you think has the highest priority.

8. anxious when you think about starting -> make a list of the reasons that you think you are anxious about the project and write a short challenge in response to each reason (that points out any exaggeration or irrationality or distortion you can find in the fear), then do something that really helps you feel calm (e.g., take 20 extremely slow, extremely deep breaths), and when you’re done, immediately start on the project.

9. too distracted by your current environment to work effectively -> go to another room or a coffee shop or a corner (where there is nothing in your immediate field of view – try to face a wall) and put on headphones to listen to your preferred customized white noise (http://bit.ly/2nQIZuN) or instrumental music, then get started.

10. there isn’t enough time at this moment to make meaningful progress -> even a minor forward step is worthwhile, so if there is at least some small amount of progress you can make in the next ten minutes, do that; otherwise, schedule a few hours of free, uninterrupted time on your calendar to work on the project (picking a time during which you’re unlikely to be distracted by other things) and work on it then.

11. that you’re going to fail at the project -> make a list of the reasons you think you will fail, for write down one thing you can do to reduce the chance that you fail in that way, then make a list of all the evidence you can think of that implies you can succeed at the project, then get started on it.

12. it’s going to be unpleasant to work on it -> select for yourself an enjoyable reward activity that you’re going to allow yourself to do after you work on the project for an hour, then pick out whatever you think the easiest part of the project is, then go work on that easiest part for an hour to earn your reward.

Additionally, many studies have found that SSRIs (and other medications) help people with both depression and anxiety, as do certain therapeutic modalities such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, suggesting further linkage.

Findings like these lead some to conclude that the two diseases are just one and the same, or part of the “same thing.” I don’t agree. The main reasons I don’t agree are because:

A. Anxiety and depression feel different internally (i.e., they have different “qualia” for most people). This is a major part of how we can tell which one we’re experiencing at a given moment. For instance, for me, I am more likely to experience anxious feelings in my upper chest, with depressive feelings being more like an “emptiness.”

B. Some events cause anxiety but not depression (e.g., worrying that there is a tiger hiding by the watering hole because you saw a tiger there at another time); others cause depression but without necessarily causing anxiety (e.g., having trouble getting over the death of a beloved friend a year after the event).

C. The behavioral changes they cause tend to be different since anxiety tends to cause avoidance of the things you fear, whereas depression tends to produce a lack of motivation.

D. There are some personal factors that are strongly linked to one but not the other. For instance, in our research, we found that negative self-talk is strongly linked to depression, but it is not linked to anxiety (once you control for depression).

Clearly, though, anxiety and depression ARE very connected.

So, how ARE they linked?

Here’s what I think the main links between anxiety and depression are:

1. Anxiety sometimes causes depression since anxiety at high levels leads people to avoid important things of value out of fear and (in some cases) out of exhaustion. Missing out on the things they value has a tendency to make people depressed. And feeling trapped by your anxiety can also give a sense of hopelessness, leading to depression.

2. Depression sometimes causes anxiety since feeling that “nothing really matters,” or that there is “no point in trying,” or that “I’m worthless” can lead to difficulty with motivation, exhaustion, and giving up, which can cause a snowballing set of anxiety-inducing life problems (e.g., fear of losing one’s job, or fear of losing friendships, or a piling up of life chores that go undone, with increasingly large consequences).

3. There are factors that increase one’s chances of getting both depression AND anxiety, such as early life trauma, negative life events (like losing a job), and poverty.

Therefore I see the links this way:

Depression sometimes causes anxiety.

so: D -> A

Anxiety sometimes causes depression.

so: A -> D

A negative spiral can occur, with anxiety causing depression, which causes anxiety, which causes depression, and so on, in a feedback loop.

so: A -> D -> A -> D -> …

And difficult life situations and events can cause BOTH simultaneously.

so: X, Y, Z -> A & D

So yes, depression and anxiety are highly related, but they don’t, by any means, seem to be “the same thing.”

This piece was first written on January 10, 2021, and first appeared on this site on December 23, 2022.

When a friend or loved one has something bad happen to them, what should you do to help them feel better? This question can be difficult to answer because it seems that at different times people want different things: empathy, problem-solving, optimism, distraction, and so on. See for instance this study where people give divergent answers about what they want from a friend after something bad happens.

We propose that there are four general states that a person may be in when something bad happens, and that knowing which of these states they are in can help you figure out how you can best comfort them. The key distinctions we draw here are that when something bad happens to you, at first you may not yet comprehend what’s happening, then you may feel bad but not yet want those emotions to go away. After that, you may be ready to start feeling better, and finally, you may want help with problem-solving. Often when you try to comfort somebody and it seems to make things worse, it’s because you are offering assistance that is best given at a different stage. For example, trying to cheer someone up when the person is still in a stage where they do not want to feel better yet or offering advice when they are still too upset to hear it.

Note that we are only considering non-emergency situations here, since emergencies require immediate action. Furthermore, note that while people do not always pass through all of these different states when something bad happens (so they are not really “stages” per se), when they do all occur, they tend to happen in a predictable order.

The Four States of Distress Model

State 1: Shocked or confused (you can help them understand what happened and how they feel about it)

Most common potential emotions: shock, confusion, surprise, fear, dread, denial

Example situation 1: your friend comes home from vacation and finds that their apartment is wrecked.

Example situation 2: your friend who thought their relationship was going great is suddenly dumped by their partner.

Strategies more likely to be helpful: :

• Active listening
• Helping to resolve confusion
• Expression of concern
• Validating their confusion
• Reflecting back to them your understanding of what they have said

Why: when something negative and unexpected occurs, we may need time to understand what actually happened and how we feel about it. A friend can help facilitate that process.

State 2: Feeling bad and not ready to feel better (you can help them express their feelings and feel validated)

Most common potential emotions: intense forms of sadness, depression, anxiety, anger, contempt, guilt, jealousy

Example situation 1: your friend whose home was wrecked is feeling highly anxious about the expensive damages and furiously angry at the person whom they let stay there while they were gone

Example situation 2: your friend who was broken up with yesterday is feeling very sad about the loss of the relationship

Strategies more likely to be helpful:

• Active listening
• Empathy
• Validating their emotions
• Reflecting back to them your understanding of what they have said
• Help them get into a mind set where they are ready to feel better

Why: when we’re feeling strong negative emotions we may actually want to be feeling them. For instance, if someone we love dies, we likely will want to be sad about it for some period of time. Or if we are betrayed, we may well want to stay angry at the person for a while because we feel that anger is deserved.

State 3: Feeling bad but wants to feel better (you can help them feel better)

Most common potential emotions: intense to moderate forms of sadness, depression, anxiety, anger, contempt, guilt, jealousy [same list as State 2]

Example situation 1: your friend whose home was wrecked is still feeling anxious about the cost of replacing their possessions and angry at the person who caused the damage, but they are sick of thinking about it all the time and want to move past it

Example situation 2: your friend who was broken up with still feels very sad about it, but wants to feel better, move on, and focus on the future

Strategies more likely to be helpful (though note that this section is especially person dependent, with different people having different Comfort Languages):

• Optimism, reframing (e.g., seeing it in a less negative light or finding a silver lining)
• Physical comforting (e.g., a hug)
• Validating their emotions
• Distraction (e.g., doing a fun activity)
• Helping them explore and understand their feelings
• Problem-solving (especially if there is a way to quickly fix much of the problem)

Why: after feeling bad for a while, at some point we are likely to get sick of those negative feelings and wish that we could feel better again. At that point a friend can help alleviate those negative feelings.

State 4: Feeling better and wants solutions (you can help them move forward past the problem)

Most common potential emotions: more manageable or minor forms of sadness, depression, anxiety, anger, contempt, guilt, or jealousy

Example situation 1: your friend whose home was wrecked is feeling somewhat less bad about it, but now they want help figuring out how they are going to get their stuff replaced and whether they can get the guest who caused the damage to pay.

Example situation 2: your friend who was broken up with is feeling somewhat less bad about it and wants your help meeting someone new

Strategies more likely to be helpful (though your choice will depend on the person and your relationship to them)::

• Brainstorming solutions
• Problem solving
• Advice
• Volunteering your time to actually help on the solution
• Providing resources to help solve the problem

Why: when we’re feeling intensely bad, it’s often both difficult and unappealing to problem-solve. After we start to feel better, however, we may start to feel motivated to find a way to improve our situation. A friend can be very helpful at this point in helping us think through potential solutions or by volunteering to help directly.

So the next time a friend or loved one has had something bad happen to them, consider applying the The Four States of Distress Model by considering which of the four states they are likely in:

1. Shocked or confused – you can help them figure out what happened and how they they are feeling
2. Feeling bad and not ready to feel better – you can listen empathetically and validate their feelings
3. Feeling bad but wants to feel better – you can help them feel better using their preferred Comfort Language
4. Feeling better and wants solutions – you can help them figure out what to do

This essay is the second in a series examining sexual harassment and assault.

The first essay can be read here, which also includes more information about the study participants.

Sexual harassment and assault occur far too often. In this post, I explore what the predictors are of being a perpetrator and being a victim. In particular, I use linear regression to predict whether each person is a victim and/or perpetrator of sexual harassment based on how many (out of 6) forms of sexual harassment/assault a person said they had experienced as a victim (their 0-6 “victimization score”) and as a perpetrator (their 0-6 “perpetration score”).

Warning: this post contains extensive discussion of sexual harassment and sexual assault.

—

PREDICTORS OF BEING A PERPETRATOR OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT OR ASSAULT

Overview: risk-taking, being unamicable (i.e., the sort of person who contradicts others), and having been victimized oneself all seem to be predictors of having been a perpetrator of sexual harassment or sexual assault. However, all these relationships are fairly weak.

One can only speculate about why these three variables, in particular, are associated with perpetration. My speculative guesses are:

Risk-taking: perhaps this is linked to being a perpetrator simply because there is risk taken on by harassing or assaulting (such as risk of social ostracism or arrest). Risk-taking is also known to be correlated with some personality disorders, which may be a partial explanation as well.

Unamicability: perhaps this is linked to being a perpetrator because it relates to contradicting other people’s opinions, which happens in harassment/assault contexts (e.g. arguing against a “no”). The trait of contradicting others is also correlated with lower compassion, which may be another factor (as can be seen here on our site, PersonalityMap, which maps over 1 million human correlations).

Prior victimization: perhaps this is linked to being a perpetrator because certain contexts (e.g., where harassment and assault are more common) breed both victimization and perpetration simultaneously, or because prior victimization makes perpetration feel more acceptable to the perpetrator (e.g., a possible reflection of the phrase “hurt people hurt people”)

— details —

Looking in detail at 23 variables collected in the study ONE at a time (that is, not taking each of the others into account), the self-reported personality traits and demographic characteristics most correlated with a person’s “perpetration score” involved being:

CORRELATIONS WITH PERPETRATION (all based on self-reported information)

1. risk taking (r=0.25)

2. sex focused (r=0.19)

3. unamicable i.e., contradicting others (r=0.19)

4. promiscuous (r=0.17)

5. improvisational (r=0.15)

6. unusual or non-ordinary (r=0.15)

7. a victim of harassment/assault i.e. victimization score (r=0.14)

8. unforgiving (r=0.14)

9. selfish (r=0.13)

10. male (r=0.12)

11. uncompassionate (r=0.08)

12. sexually attractive (r=0.08)

13. more educated (r=0.08)

Each of these correlations above is statistically significantly different from 0 at roughly p<0.05, but none of them is particularly strong (i.e., even the largest correlation r=0.25 is quite a modest correlation).

Potentially more interesting is to look at a linear regression that tries to predict each person’s perpetration score from the 23 other demographic and personality variables.

Overall, the model captured only about 13% of the variance in people’s perpetration scores (i.e., adjusted R^2=0.13), which is fairly weak. In other words, it is not able to predict who is a perpetrator with reliability.

Here are the variables that came up strongest in the regression. The standardized regression coefficients (i.e., the strength of effect once each variable has been normalized to have the same mean and standard deviation as the others) are shown in parentheses.

REGRESSION COEFFICIENTS PREDICTING PERPETRATION

1. a victim of harassment/assault i.e., victimization score (0.205)

2. risk taking (0.161)

3. social conservativeness (0.149)

4. unamicable/contradicting others (0.120)

5. education (0.106)

6. emotionally aware (0.103)

7. non complexity seeking (0.101)

8. age (0.085)

All the variables shown are statistically significant at p<0.05 (the 15 other variables used in the regression are not shown). The way to interpret these variables is that each of these appears to add some additional ability to predict who will be a perpetrator, even when you know the other variables. Or, put another way, the regression coefficients are an indicator of how much each of these variables matters in predicting who is a perpetrator once you’ve controlled for all the other variables in the model. Specifically, the coefficient says how many more “yes” questions a person tends to give on the 6 sexual harassment/assault perpetration questions as the variable in question increased by 1 standard deviation, on average.

A few things to note:

Being male becomes no longer statistically significant (p=0.143, coef=0.080) once you account for these other variables, which surprised me quite a lot. In other words, it was significantly correlated on its own, but doesn’t come up as particularly relevant in the model with all the variables. We know that males commit sexual harassment and assault a lot more often than females. This result suggests that some part of the reason that males commit sexual harassment and assault more than females may be due to their higher risk-taking or unamicable (or by something related to those factors). 

Age appearing here may not mean what you expect; it could just be due to more years alive, meaning more opportunities to be a perpetrator (rather than someone who is older being more likely to be a perpetrator due to age itself)

Having been the victim of sexual harassment/assault is found here to be predictive of having been a perpetrator. We can’t, from this data, tell what the causality for this looks like. It could be that there is direct causation (i.e., victimization causally increases the chance of future perpetration), but it also could be that there is indirect causation through some other variables (e.g., if in your social world sexual harassment and assault are common, that might increase your chance both of becoming a victim and of becoming a perpetrator).

Now, onto the other major question we’re exploring here.

WHAT PREDICTS  BEING A VICTIM OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT/ASSAULT?

Overview: variables associated with being a victim of sexual harassment or assault included being female, worried, a prior perpetrator of sexual harassment/assault, unusual (i.e., self-identified as non-ordinary), compassionate, less educated, improvisational, and unselfish.

One can only speculate about why these variables are associated with victimization. My speculative guesses for reasons for some of the associations are:

Worried: perhaps this is associated with being a victim because having been a victim of harassment/assault or being currently surrounded by risks of it can substantially raise a person’s anxiety level.

Unusual: perhaps because “not fitting in” or “not being like others” may make a person a more noticeable or an easier target of harassment/assault

Compassionate/unselfish: perhaps because more compassionate and unselfish people may be taken advantage of by would-be harassers/assailants or seem like easier targets (e.g., a perpetrator may guilt the soon-to-be victim into spending time with them)

— details —

Looking at in detail at the 23 variables one at a time (that is, not taking each of the others into account), the self-reported personality traits and demographic characteristics most correlated with a person’s “victimization score” involved being:

CORRELATIONS WITH VICTIMIZATION

1. female (r=0.42)

2. worried (r=0.26)

3. thin-skinned (r=0.22)

4. compassionate (r=0.19)

5. unselfish (r=.16)

6. a perpetrator of harassment/assault, i.e., perpetration score (r=0.14)

7. unusual or non-ordinary (r=0.13)

8. warm (r=0.13)

9. less educated (r=0.10)

10. emotionally aware (r=0.10)

11. unamicable (r=0.08)

12. improvisational (r=0.08)

All of these correlations are statistically significantly different from 0 at about p<0.05. Though all are quite small correlations, except being female, which has a moderately strong correlation.

We can also again look at a linear regression, this time trying to predict each person’s victimization score from the 23 demographic and personality variables.

This model overall is more accurate than our previous one for predicting perpetration, capturing about 32% of the variance in victimization scores (i.e., adjusted R^2=0.32) rather than only 13%, though this is still not an especially accurate model.

Here are the self-reported personality traits and demographic variables that come up in the regression as being statistically significant at the p<0.05 level, along with the standardized coefficients (i.e., strength of effect). 

REGRESSION COEFFICIENTS PREDICTING VICTIMIZATION

1. female (0.443)

2. worried (0.173)

3. a perpetrator of harassment/assault i.e., perpetration score (0.160)

4. unusual or non-ordinary (0.143)

5. socially liberal (0.141)

6. economically conservative (0.123)

7. compassionate (0.115)

8. less educated (0.108)

9. improvisational (0.106)

10. promiscuous (0.104)

11. complexity seeking (0.099)

12. unselfish (0.090)

The interpretation of this is that the regression coefficients are an indicator of how much each of these variables matters in predicting who is a victim once you’ve controlled for all the other variables in the model.

A few things to note:

Being worried is the second strongest predictor here, but keep in mind it’s unclear which way the causality goes. It could be that being a worried or anxious person makes someone more of a target, but it also could be that those who have been victims become more worried (as would make sense), or it could be that some other variables cause both increased victimization and increased worry (such as growing up in a non-supportive environment).

It’s weird to see that social liberalness is associated with more victimization, but economic conservatives as well. I have no idea what to make of that.

—

APPENDIX

If you’re interested, here is the full set of variables analyzed here:

Attributes

1. age

2. education level

3. household income

4. self-identified gender

5. economic liberalness/conservativeness

6. social liberalness/conservativeness

7. self-rated sexual attractiveness

8. self-rated sexiness of clothing

Self-rated personality traits:

9. promiscuous

10. amicable (i.e. non-contradictory of others)

11. compassionate

12. complexity seeking

13. emotionally aware

14. forgiving

15. improvisational

16. risk averse

17. sex focussed

18. thick skinned

19. unselfish

20. unusual

21. unworried

22. warm

Dependent variables

23. victimization score (0-6 counting yes responses to which forms of sexual harassment/assault they have been a victim of)

24. perpetration score (0-6 counting yes responses to which forms of sexual harassment/assault they have been a perpetrator of)

—

In the next post, I will explore what perpetrators said about why they harassed or assaulted others.

happiness =

   social-acceptance
+ self-acceptance
+ meaning
+ hope
+ pleasure
+ efficacy
+ resilience
+ optimism

– physical-wants
– pain
– anxiety
– loss and depression

Positives

social-acceptance = human interaction with the sort of people you want to interact with in the form of warm and trusting relationships, and the gut-level feeling that this group accepts you, likes you, and respects you

Interventions: exposure therapy if you have social anxiety, avoiding mean people, social skills training, getting direct feedback on how to be a better friend, meeting a wide range of people in a wide variety of social circles, leaving a social circle that treats you badly

–

self-acceptance = believing you are not fundamentally bad or worthless, that you are worthy of love and respect, not feeling excessively guilty about your past actions, etc.

Interventions: self-compassion training

–

meaning = feeling on a gut level that your life has meaning or significance, that actions you take have the ability to influence what happens, and that the world in general is not meaningless

Interventions: working on a project that you find deeply important for a cause much bigger than yourself, cognitive behavioral therapy or antidepressants if you think you may be depressed and haven’t tried them yet

–

hope = feeling on a gut level that there will be good things in the future and that your future is not doomed

Interventions: mapping out plans for your future, applying problem solving techniques to problems that you feel are hopeless, life coaching

–

pleasure = for instance, eating delicious food, listening to beautiful music, play, doing work you find fun, etc.

Interventions: spending money on pleasurable experiences rather than things, engaging in pleasurable experiences at the maximal rate you can afford without them getting dull or routine, trying a wide variety of activities to see which you most enjoy

–

efficacy = the belief that you have the capability to achieve the things that you want to achieve, and the feeling that you are actively achieving worthwhile things (whether in work, in hobbies, or in your social life)

Interventions: if possible, choosing work where you get a consistent feeling of accomplishment, taking on side projects or hobbies that give you a feeling of accomplishment, training each week at a skill that you can watch yourself improving at, looking for small achievements that you can hit easily and then building up slowly to more and more difficult ones

–

resilience = the ability to recover quickly from setbacks, failures, and bad conditions

–

optimism = a mindset where you see the best in things, interpret ambiguous events positively, see the silver lining in bad things, etc.

Negatives

physical-wants = hunger, thirst, sleep deprivation, the need for warmth, etc.

–

pain = injuries, illnesses, physical environments, or social treatment that causes consistent substantial pain

Interventions: avoiding repetitive stress injury by using good typing practices, avoiding chronic back pain by learning to have good sitting posture, leaving abusive relationships

–

anxiety = constantly worrying about, or ruminating or obsessing over what will happen or did happen (e.g., from uncertainty about basic security like clean water, nourishing food, reliable shelter, or safety from physical danger, or worrying about social rejection or fear of failure), or regular triggers of intense fear

Interventions: regularly doing intense exercise, cognitive behavioral therapy or antidepressants if you think you may have an anxiety disorder, Exposure and Response Prevention if you think you may have obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), Prolonged Exposure Therapy if you think you might have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)

–

loss and depression = having something you value taken away from you, or knowing that you will lose something you value in the near future

Please note: if you have been feeling a lot of sadness, or you worry that you might be depressed, I recommend seeing a professional and checking out our app UpLift.

If you like this essay, you may also like The Fourier transform of happiness and Ten theories for how to achieve true happiness (and useful resources for you to try them out).

Let’s dissect what’s going on here. An event triggers an upsetting thought, and the thought causes negative emotion. With your mood now lowered, upsetting thoughts are more likely to come to mind. Soon, another upsetting thought does occur, which causes more negative emotion, and further upsetting thoughts. Anxiety provokes worried thoughts, which themselves produce further anxiety. Sadness leads to despairing thoughts, which provoke greater sadness.

But negative emotions don’t just cause negative thoughts, they cause excessively negative thoughts, that reflect a distorted picture of reality. Anxiety causes us to overestimate how dangerous things are, depression makes our situation seem hopeless, and anger makes small slights seem like major attacks. In other words, negative emotions cause us to think in distorted ways that make these same emotions grow.

One way out of this downward emotional spiral is to use reason to reduce the mood lowering effect of negative thoughts by challenging any irrational or exaggerated content lurking in them. The earlier in the process you can apply reasoning, the better, because the more upset you are, the more difficult it is to reason effectively, and the more your thoughts are likely to be distorted.

A useful approach to reasoning yourself into a better mood is to pinpoint the negative distortions in thought that your emotions are causing, and then rephrase your thoughts more realistically. If you do this successfully your thoughts won’t lower your emotional state, and in this less negative mood state, further negative thoughts will be less likely to occur. This realization and those mentioned above are some of the powerful insights to come out of the field of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).

But how do you go about finding distortions in your thinking? Psychologists like David Burns have made it easy for us by categorizing the most common cognitive distortions that occur when people are upset. These are listed at the bottom of this page in an easy to consume form, and you can also download a quick reference here. Not only does this list of common distortions provide a fascinating glimpse into the content of the depressed and anxious mind, it serves as a useful tool that we can leverage when emotional.

So when you’re feeling upset, apply the following procedure:

1. Notice the upsetting thoughts that are running through your mind, and write them down.
2. Search the list of common cognitive distortions for any distortions that are lingering in these thoughts.
3. For each thought, generate a more realistic and productive one. These new thoughts should address or refute any distortions in the originals. Say these new thoughts to yourself, and confirm that you believe them.

Click here for a worksheet to help you do this exercise.

There is a good chance that just carrying out the exercise will immediately improve your mood. Even better, repeated practice may start to permanently alter your thinking, so that you’re less likely to produce cognitive distortions in the first place. Methods like this one are commonly employed by psychologists when treating severely anxious and depressed people, with good effect, but this technique also works well for milder forms of negative emotion.

So the next time you’re suffering from negative emotions and want to reduce your pain, you’ll now have an exercise you can apply to do something about it.

Below is the list of common cognitive distortions.

1. All or nothing thinking

Seeing things in extreme, black or white categories.

Since I’ve never had a girlfriend, I must be a loser.

If I fail this exam, I’m worthless.

If was actually good, I wouldn’t have made that mistake.

2. Overgeneralization

Seeing bad things as being part of a pattern that will inevitably repeat.

Just my luck! Bad things are always happening to me.

There I go again, screwing up another good lead.

Turned yet down again. I’m never going to have a girlfriend.

3. Focusing on the negative

Paying attention to the bad parts of a thing while ignoring the good.

I may have done well on my other exams, but I got a B in math.

This war proves that humanity is fundamentally evil.

The wedding would have been nice, but the waiters were rude.

4. Disqualifying the positive

Discrediting positive aspects or turning them into negatives.

The special effects were good, but not as good as I hoped.

He said he admired my intelligence, but was only being nice.

It’s true I got an A in that class, but that one was easy.

5. Jumping to conclusions

Making negative guesses about the future or what others think.

If they cared about me they would have come to my party.

He must be angry at me since he didn’t return my phone call.

I just know that they are going to reject my paper submission.

6. Magnification

Exaggerating the scale or significance of an event.

I’m never going to be happy again without her.

I can’t believe I’m filing for bankruptcy. My life is over.

If I don’t get this job, I’m going to be completely screwed.

7. Emotional Reasoning

Using your feeling about things as proof they really are that way.

Feel ashamed  ->  Assume you’ve done wrong  ->  “I shouldn’t have done that”

Feel angry  ->  Assume the other person was in the wrong  ->  “You asshole”

Feel rejected  ->  Assume no one wants to see you  ->  “No one likes me”

8. Should and Must statements

Telling yourself that you/things should be a certain way.

I can’t make mistakes like this again!

She shouldn’t treat me that way.

Waiters should always show respect to their customers.

9. Labeling

Oversimplifying the traits of yourself or others using emotional wording. 

I’m such a pig for eating all that ice cream!

That bitch at the movie theatre was so rude.

Only an idiot would make that mistake.

10. Blaming

Placing blame on yourself or others when the blamed person isn’t really responsible.

If I were a good mother, my daughter would be happier.

If you had been more careful, I wouldn’t have biked into you!

Still jobless after a month of searching. What’s wrong with me?

Suppose that you know a friend who always eats chocolate cake when he has the opportunity, even when he forcefully wills himself not to. Naturally, you would predict that this person would eat chocolate cake the next time he has the opportunity. But we often fail to apply this sort of simple reasoning when assessing our own behavior. We believe that we have “free will”, and are in control of our decisions.  So on issues of willpower, we believe that our past behavior does not determine our present or future behavior. We say to ourselves, “It didn’t work before, but this time I will simply choose not to eat the cake,” or “I’ll just exert more willpower this time.” But unless you or your motivation have changed significantly since your past chocolate cake encounter, why should you expect yourself to behave any differently now than you did before? If you previously had good reason not to eat the cake, and you ate it anyway, why should that same reason stop you from eating it next time? If there is nothing substantially different about you, your motivation, your willpower, or the situation in which you are being placed, then there is no good reason why you will behave differently this time.

If resisting the cake is obviously the correct action to take in the future, it is natural to expect oneself to be capable of making that correct choice.  From the current vantage point, that is, one without cake in sight, it is easy to see that you should not eat lots of empty cake calories. The problem occurs though when the cake is in front of you, and you are salivating. Now, it is difficult to remember why you shouldn’t eat the cake. When you are planning ahead, you are not quite the same person as you are in front of cake. You are wrong to assume that you would make the same decisions in front of the cake that you had planned to make before encountering it. If a certain strategy for solving our problems has never worked before, and we still believe it might work, we may be failing to model ourselves accurately.

The big danger of viewing ourselves as being too much in control of our actions, or not being subject to our past decisions, is that we tend to try the same thing over and over again. We think, “Next time I’ll just choose to do things differently,” or “Next time I will try harder,” ignoring the fact that we never seem to be able to actually do that. We fall into a routine, trying to solve the same problem using the same method, and continue with that method long after it becomes clear that it is not helping us. We continue trying this method merely because we are used to trying it, or because we keep thinking, “Maybe now I can get it to work for me,” even when there is no indication that anything has changed since the last attempt.

If you have been trying to will yourself out of depression for the past year, it’s time to try something else. If you have been in psychotherapy for your anxiety for two years, with no noticeable improvement, it’s time to find a new type of therapy or explore other methods. If you have not been able to meet someone you’d like to date in more than a year, you should start meeting different kinds of people in different ways. If you keep trying the same old thing, you will most likely get the same old results.

In light of these considerations, one particularly helpful strategy for self-improvement is to spend a couple of hours coming up with a list of new self-improvement methods you are going to try. After you’ve given one item on the list a fair trial, move onto the next one. Make the list long enough that you won’t get to the end of it easily. Keep working until you’ve achieved your goal. The fact that there are many things on your list that you have not tried yet can be motivating, as it reminds you that, even if a few potential solutions to your problems don’t work out, there are lots of things left to try. Hopefully you will not have to go through the entire list, but only work through it progressively until you see sufficient improvement.  At that point, you are ready to move on and improve a different area of your life.

Here are some sample lists of things to try to help achieve some common self-improvement goals:

Anxiety/Stress

1. Read When Panic Attacks.

2. For eight weeks, spend 15 minutes a day trying exercises from the book (for instance, as soon as you wake up each morning).

3. Read The Mindfulness and Acceptance Workbook for Anxiety.

4. Read The Worry Cure (if your anxiety comes in the form of frequent worrying).

5. Find a cognitive behavioral therapist in your area, and begin weekly sessions with him or her. (Cognitive behavioral therapy is the most evidence-based treatment for anxiety.)

1. For eight weeks, make a routine to exercise for 20 minutes every morning.

2. For two weeks, practice doing diaphragmatic breathing for 5 minutes each morning, Then, for six weeks, practice immediately doing this sort of breathing whenever you notice your anxiety level rising.

8. Setup an appointment with a psychiatrist to discuss anti-anxiety medication.

9. Sign up for local meditation classes and go for eight weeks. During this period, meditate for 15 minutes each morning just after you get out of bed.

Depression

1. Read Feeling Good (skipping the section on medication, which is a bit out of date).

2. Read The Happiness Trap.

3. For eight weeks, spend 15 minutes a day trying exercises from the book (for instance, as soon as you wake up each morning).

4. Read Overcoming Depression One Step at a Time.

5. For eight weeks, spend 15 minutes a day trying suggestions from the book (for instance, as soon as you wake up each morning).

6.  Find a cognitive behavioral therapist in your area, and begin weekly sessions with him or her. (Cognitive behavioral therapy is the most evidence-based treatment for depression.)

7. For eight weeks, make it a routine to exercise for 20 minutes every morning.

8. Each morning, make a list of three things you are grateful for. Ideally, get a friend to do the same, and email each other these lists each morning. Try to vary the list from day-to-day.

9. Each morning, make a list of three things you are looking forward to. If you can’t think of three things, then immediately try to schedule some things to look forward to so that you can complete the list every day.

10. Setup an appointment with a psychiatrist, and discuss anti-depression medication.

Difficulty finding someone you’d like to date

1. Sign up for an online dating website, such as OKCupid. As you write your profile, remember that it is an advertisement trying to attract people you’d like to get to know.

2. Ask your friends (of the attractive gender) for feedback on your profile, to see if they think it is likely to attract the sort of people you’d like to meet.

3. Schedule at least an hour each week to search for new people on the site and send messages to the people you find.

4. Ask fashionable friends how you could change your appearance to be more attractive, and implement those changes.

5. Ask your most socially savvy friends (and people you used to date, if possible) if they can pinpoint any behaviors you have that others might find unattractive, and particularly attractive features that you could work to highlight. Make a list of such behaviors, and work actively on correcting them. Review this list of corrections for 5 minutes each morning for 6 weeks.

6. Read How to Win Friends and Influence People.

7. Sign up for speed dating in your area, and attend sessions once a month. Speed dating events are often themed, so try to select events that will be likely to attract the type of people you are interested in meeting.

8. Ask a few of your friends if they can set you up with someone they think you might like. Repeat this process as often as you can without becoming a nuisance.

9. Join groups, take classes, or do activities in your area where you are likely to meet many new people. Choose these groups and activities strategically: think about which activities will also attract people you may like.

10. Make an effort to attend every social gathering you can where there are likely to be people you don’t know. At each of these events, make sure that you speak to every attractive person for at least a few minutes.

It is common that people will live with big problems and allocate very little time to trying to fix them. They will spend 50 hours a week working, 10 hours surfing the internet, 5 hours watching TV, and won’t even put 1 hour per week into resolving their biggest source of unhappiness. They become so used to living with their biggest problem that they stop trying to even generate solutions. Or they come to believe that their major problem is unsolvable. Or they somehow become convinced that the same method they always use to try to solve their problem will work this time, even though it’s never worked before. Or they come to believe that their negative thinking and emotions occur as a necessary consequence of the things that have happened to them, and therefore convince themselves that there is nothing for them to solve. Or the fact that they have this problem so bothers them that they refuse to even think about it.

Consider A, a typical example. A has been depressed for years, and his depression is quite obviously the worst thing in his life. But he does approximately nothing to try to improve it. He doesn’t read books on overcoming depression. He doesn’t read articles on how to manage living with depression, or try to any significant degree to understand why he has thoughts that make him depressed. He doesn’t look into what types of therapy have the best track record for curing depression. He doesn’t take medication to treat his very unpleasant emotions. He doesn’t talk to people who have overcome depression and ask for their advice. If you buy him a book on depression, he probably won’t even read it.

Or take the example of B, who feels guilty on a near constant basis and has for years, but he does nothing to try to fix it. Or the example of C who avoids meeting new people because of crippling anxiety, but he has never read a book about social anxiety. Or the example of D who is constantly lonely, but doesn’t restructure her life to make sure she meets a lot more people. Or the example of E who is constantly being hurt by guys she dates, but hasn’t made any changes to the way she dates, who she dates, or the way she thinks about dating. Or F who knows he drinks too much, but has never looked into strategies to help a person in his situation drink less. Or G, who hates her job, and has for six months, but isn’t even looking for another one.

Putting a few hours a week into solving the biggest problem in your life does not come naturally to most people. Most people don’t set aside time to just think and brainstorm solutions. Or create reading lists of books and articles related to their personal challenges. Most people don’t make a point to talk to five smart friends to get their advice on the biggest issue in their lives, write down the proposed solutions, and carefully evaluate them. Most people don’t keep a list of all the things they plan on trying in order to improve their major problem.

If your biggest problem has been your biggest problem for a long time, it will probably take a lot of effort to solve. Your first attempt likely will fail. You may have to spend many hours brainstorming a solution. You may have to discuss the problem with a number of people to get their ideas. You likely will have to do research on how similar problems have gotten solved by others, and look at the best evidence you can find for how well the different approaches work.

Ask yourself right now:

• What is the biggest problem in your life?
• What are you doing now to solve it?
• What articles or books might help you figure out solutions?
• What techniques have been proven to work for this sort of problem?
• Who could you talk to that may have good ideas to help you solve it?
• Can you set-aside some time right now to work on thinking up solutions?

If, for a long time, you’ve been using the same approach (or no approach at all) to fix this problem, and it doesn’t seem to be helping, you probably will need to try new things. Go read some relevant articles, read some relevant books, schedule time in your calendar for serious thinking and problem solving, talk to people who tend to generate good ideas, and make a list of at least five new potentially helpful things that you are going to try. Actually resolving the biggest problem in your life is very likely worth this effort.