Perseverance Toward Life Goals Can Fend Off Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders
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Re: Perseverance Toward Life Goals Can Fend Off Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders
#2Thanks I needed this
Re: Perseverance Toward Life Goals Can Fend Off Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders
#3Or the act of fending off depression, anxiety, and panic disorders can positively influence perseverance toward life goals. That’s a just as valid conclusion from the data.
Re: Perseverance Toward Life Goals Can Fend Off Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders
#4Or the act of fending off depression, anxiety, and panic disorders can positively influence perseverance toward life goals. That’s a just as valid conclusion from the data.
Yeah, absolutely.
> participants were asked to rate their goal persistence (e.g., “When I encounter problems, I don’t give up until I solve them”), self-mastery (e.g., “I can do just anything I really set my mind to”) and positive reappraisal (e.g., “I can find something positive, even in the worst situations”). Diagnoses for major depressive, anxiety and panic disorders were also collected at each interval.
> People who showed more goal persistence and optimism during the first assessment in the mid-1990s had greater reductions in depression, anxiety and panic disorders across the 18 years, according to the authors.
Not only is your conclusion a valid one from the data, I'd say that it should very well by the default conclusion. Answering low on their goal-persistence questions would be obvious flags for being depressed.
Especially because there's no casual link that can be established, the most I could say from reading this article is that if you aren't interested in pursuing goals, you may be depressed.
Re: Perseverance Toward Life Goals Can Fend Off Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders
#5Or the act of fending off depression, anxiety, and panic disorders can positively influence perseverance toward life goals. That’s a just as valid conclusion from the data.
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Re: Perseverance Toward Life Goals Can Fend Off Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders
#6Or the act of fending off depression, anxiety, and panic disorders can positively influence perseverance toward life goals. That’s a just as valid conclusion from the data.
Or it's not "or" but "and," with the the two feeding each other in a positive feedback loop.
Re: Perseverance Toward Life Goals Can Fend Off Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders
#7But what are you sacrificing in return for your “perseverance”?
Very few people tend to look at the mind as a system, and also seem to ignore that depression, anxiety, panic disorders, etc. happen for a reason. The reason why modern humanity have increased risk of these symptoms is because they know, given their perhaps wrongly learned models of the world or otherwise, that even when they achieve their so-called life goals, that they wouldn’t achieve philosophical nor psychological satisfaction that they seek. Their mind has predicted the conclusion of their efforts, and the conclusion lies far below what they seek. Thus the mind desperately attempts to re-understand, re-configure, and re-model the world to achieve its goals.
But instead what is espoused by modern psychology and self-help is a kind of blind optimism or a horse blinders kind of approach to tending one’s mind. Most types of meditative studies also force this notion of blindness. Depression and anxiety and other “disorders” (whose classification from its onset is very unhelpful for its ideological integration into society as a valid problem to work through) most often happen to those who are sensitive, those who have surprisingly extensive models of the world, etc.
But it has become very fashionable in SV intelligentsia and the communities that drink the intelligence soup that trickles down from the SV community (like other cities of America or other America-directed tech communities) to treat the mind as a dumb system that did a poor job evolving to a modern environment (e.g. rationality movement). Instead of understanding the mind (and consequently the body) as a system and listening to whatever small traces your mind has left in its great attempt to solve really important problems for you, we just blind ourselves to faux goals that we may not even actually want.
Optimization for optimization’s sake is bad, but goal-seeking for goal-seeking’s sake may be a significantly worse and dangerous meme.
Re: Perseverance Toward Life Goals Can Fend Off Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders
#8This is the point of Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. If you try to be happy, you will likely fail. But if instead, you try to give your life meaning and purpose, you will more likely find happiness orthogonally.
Re: Perseverance Toward Life Goals Can Fend Off Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders
#9But what are you sacrificing in return for your “perseverance”? Very few people tend to look at the mind as a system, and also seem to ignore that depression, anxiety, panic disorders, etc. happen for a reason. The reason why modern humanity have increased risk of these symptoms is because they know, given their perhaps wrongly learned models of the world or otherwise, that even when they achieve their so-called life…
Reading Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning has been the best thing I ever read on this topic. Changed my whole perspective.
The tldr version goes something like: “Meaning is irrelevant, but humans need meaning to live. Pick any meaning you want. Doesn’t matter what, just choose something. Then go for it with all your might. If you ever find it wasn’t a good meaning, pick a new one. You’re a different person now anyway”
Re: Perseverance Toward Life Goals Can Fend Off Depression, Anxiety, Panic Disorders
#10But what are you sacrificing in return for your “perseverance”? Very few people tend to look at the mind as a system, and also seem to ignore that depression, anxiety, panic disorders, etc. happen for a reason. The reason why modern humanity have increased risk of these symptoms is because they know, given their perhaps wrongly learned models of the world or otherwise, that even when they achieve their so-called life…
Perseverance often leads to a type of pseudo-meditation. When you work very hard towards a goal such as weight loss through exercise, you have to focus on one thing, and this can be almost meditative. This is one reason people find things like running or swimming to be 'relaxing', even though they're also 'tiring'.