YOUR FIGHT AGAINST ENTROPY IS YOUR LIFE’S CREATION

Entropy is a term from physics that describes the tendency for matter to move from order into disorder. Life can be seen as deliberately working against entropy.

If you ever watched the old Get Smart TV show (or the recent movie, which was actually pretty funny), the good guys were called "Control," and the bad guys were "Chaos." For living critters like us, that pretty well describes the situation. Chaos is where entropy draws everything naturally; control is the conscious ordering, the structure that we have to impose on ourselves and our environment in order to survive and flourish.

For most living creatures, instincts take charge of a lot of the necessary ordering which life requires; finding food, mating, sleep cycles, protective behavior, etc. But we humans are different in a fundamental way: our basic survival tool is our mind, and unlike instinctual animals, we can choose to use our basic tool of survival… or not.

With our minds, we train our own brains to hold the structure of our lives. The habits that we practice daily, weekly, monthly; they are all based on neural pathways that we have established in our brain that make it easy and natural for us to follow these routines. These habits – if they are good ones – help us to resist entropy and have a sense of meaning, purpose and direction.

The trouble is, many of the habits we develop are habits that we acquired by default – the routines that our family valued and practiced, or that our schools valued and practiced, or that any other influential people in our history have valued and practiced.

This can be wonderful if the people we learned from all had really good habits, great values, and were able to help us learn and practice the habits that would serve us the best. It can be awful if the habits that we learned are awful habits – whether we learn these directly through mimicking them, or if we use habits that we developed in reaction to bad or hurtful events, or if we made and continued in bad choices along the way in how we used the good foundation we were provided.

But even in the best of circumstances – a loving family, a supportive community, great opportunities for learning, responsibility, and growth – the habits that come easily to us may not be the best ones for our developing lives.

Many schools of psychotherapy have looked at the results of these habits, and concluded that when we are unhappy as adults, it is in some way because of the mistakes or bad behavior of parents or other important adults. The path to healing was seen as somehow healing these wounds from the past. Harm can come from abuse and neglect, of course; such experiences are harsh and can cause true damage to a growing child.

But the reason to look at and understand your past is not so much to find who did what to you; what is much more important, even in the case of abuse, is to understand what you decided to do in response. What you decided to do, even as a small child, is what forms the basis for many of your deepest habits. These habits are the meaning we make of such circumstances, put into action over time.

Our habits are like a work of expressive art, drawn with our neural connections, and on active display in the gallery of our unfolding lives.

This is not to say that any bad events were in any way your own fault or responsibility; that would be ludicrous and cruel – even though many children who suffer abuse do blame themselves, in part because it gives them a sense that they could do something, if they could somehow figure out what that something is. This protects them from feeling too desperately helpless in an overwhelming situation.

You can’t change what actually happened in the past. What you can do is to understand the meaning that you made of those events, and whatever habits you developed through those past experiences. Your habits today are often echoes of your past; reverberations of what you did and experienced and decided way back then that vibrate and amplify anew with your present day habits of structured actions.

When a child has to deal with physical abuse growing up, sometimes what they will do as adults is to continue to go toward the familiar, and find people in their adult lives who are also physically abusive. The early childhood history lives on in the present through current behavior. The habits keep playing out the same routine that was so hurtful and familiar back then.

That is what can make harmful experiences so harmful over a lifetime; the tendency to maintain the same habits and behaviors that were adaptive back then but are not adaptive or supportive now.

Child abuse is an extreme example, of course. But the same principle holds true for all of the everyday habits that we maintain from our early years – good or bad.

Here is my question to you this week: Which of your habits serve to allow entropy to take charge, and which of your habits serve to create order and structure out of chaos?

To make it very concrete: If one of your habits is to mow your lawn every week, you will likely have a nice looking lawn. On the other hand, if one of your habits is to avoid mowing your lawn, then entropy will take over, and you will end up with a yard full of overgrown weeds.

Do you have habits that allow your life to deteriorate? Do you have habits that strengthen the integrity, and the creative structure of your life?

Chances are you have both. Where do you fight entropy well? Look at the success that your successful fight brings in that particular area of your life.

Where do you allow entropy to overpower you? What areas of your life have you tended to let go?

Maybe you fight entropy well at work, but your marriage has deteriorated from not having fought entropy there. Have you allowed habits of complacency or inattentiveness blunt the joy and love you could be experiencing in your relationships?

If you look at where you fight entropy successfully, you’ll find two things:

– You have a plan, some kind of goal or direction that you are aiming for

– You have been persistent in implementing that plan, aiming for that goal

The plan is crucial. Without a plan or a goal, you’ll certainly get somewhere, but whether or not it’s where you want to go is really up to chance. And the chance isn’t very high.

But without persistence, your plans are worthless. It is the persistence – the regular action taken toward your goals – that allows you to establish the habits that will guide you to completion. Without persistence, you have to continually re-assert your will against the entropy of your own status quo every time you take whatever action you sporadically do take.

Persistence is what builds the neural pathways in your brain, and the habits that are the expressions of your consciously chosen plans, goals, and values. When you have a plan, and you are persistent with that plan, your habits become your allies. They work for you to reach your goals, so that you don’t have to work against your habits.

For we humans, without using our conscious minds to direct our actions and create the good habits that support our lives, entropy wins. But each day is a new battle, and today you can begin to fight the entropy of your life with resolve and persistence. What you create through your own fight against entropy is the masterpiece of your life.

Join me for an exciting new Mastering Happiness Teleclass!

In this class you will learn practical, effective tools for setting fresh and inspiring goals that will take us toward a more meaningful and satisfying life – not imaginary, wishful thinking, but real, down to earth skills for mastering your own habits, and your own happiness.

Cost is $395. The class will be interactive, with homework and handouts to supplement the learning and takeaways. 

The teleclass will be taped and available for the class if there is an absence.

Class is limited to fifteen participants. The 90-minute teleclass will be held on four consecutive weeks:

MAY TUESDAY EVENING CLASSES

• Tuesday, May 7 at 5 pm PST/8 pm EST
• Tuesday, May 14 at 5 pm PST/8 pm EST
• Tuesday, May 21 at 5 pm PST/8 pm EST
• Tuesday, May 28 at 5 pm PST/8 pm EST

"As a result of taking your class I have gained deeper insight into the complexities of ordinary experiences and how my approach to them can lead to a more satisfying and fulfilling life."

"I found Dr. Joel Wade’s Mastering Happiness teleclass very informative and enlightening.  He weaves together both explanations of behaviors & tools that can be used to change those behaviors.  When understood, they can eventually enhance our relationships. Goal setting & understanding the inner process one must address in order to achieve that goal was another area that has impacted my life.  If you want better direction and contentment; take his class!"