Raising our happiness baseline (with Sasha Chapin)
Spencer Greenberg speaks with Sasha Chapin about challenging the happiness set point, non-dual meditation, self-compassion, and training visualization for personal growth.
Deep Dive Analysis
18 Topic Outline
Challenging the Happiness Set Point Idea
Sasha's Personal Journey to Increased Happiness
The 'Existential Kink' Exercise and Embracing Shame
Distinction Between Conceptual and Phenomenal Self-Love
Why Embracing Shame Can Shift Reality
Overcoming Resistance to 'Woo' and New Age Ideas
The Functional 'Magic' of Skilled Practitioners
Exploring Non-Dual Meditation and Its Effects
Achieving a Permanent Shift in Consciousness
Benefits of Expanded Consciousness and Reduced Reactivity
The Power of Hyper-Attention in Interactions
Advice for Cultivating Inner Psychological Change
Learning to Visualize After Having Aphantasia
The Art and Emotional Impact of Perfume
Psychological Benefits of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
Key Advice for Aspiring Writers
Addressing Skepticism About Transformative Experiences
General and Specific Advice for Chronic Unhappiness
7 Key Concepts
Happiness Set Point
The idea that individuals have a baseline level of happiness they return to, regardless of life changes, due to temperamental factors and adaptation. Sasha believes happiness is more plastic than this implies.
Conceptual Self-Love
Believing oneself to be worthy of love based on external evaluations, achievements, or performance, often accompanied by an inner manager that judges and filters 'inappropriate' emotions.
Phenomenal Self-Love
A loving and accepting relationship with one's moment-to-moment emotions and the actual experience of being oneself, without inner filtration or flinching away from parts of the self.
Existential Kink
A psychological framework where one views behaviors or emotions typically considered shameful as something one secretly desires or enjoys, allowing for a non-judgmental embrace of those experiences to lower ego defenses.
Epistemic Helplessness (around Woo)
A state where one is unwilling to disbelieve most 'woo' claims unless personally interacted with, due to previous 'scientific materialist' beliefs being proven radically incomplete by personal experience.
Non-Dual Meditation
A practice aimed at breaking down perceived barriers between oneself and the world, leading to a feeling of unity or interconnectedness where the divide between self and other feels illusory.
Aphantasia
The inability to form mental images, where one experiences no visual glimmer when trying to imagine something. It can be overcome through specific training and addressing potential emotional components.
8 Questions Answered
Yes, happiness is significantly more plastic than the idea of rigid happiness set points implies; personal experience and serious meditation practice can lead to categorical shifts in happiness levels.
Conceptual self-love is thinking you are worthy based on external evaluations, while phenomenal self-love is having a loving and accepting relationship with your actual moment-to-moment emotions and the experience of being you.
By viewing shame with curiosity and trying to experience its sensations aesthetically, one can lower ego defenses, mark previously 'unsafe' emotional experiences as safe, and overwrite psychological rules that kept those areas off-limits.
It's often necessary to have a high degree of skepticism, but also an openness to practices that work experientially, even if their explanations sound unscientific, as some 'woo' practices offer powerful frames that can have positive results.
Yes, it is possible to train oneself to visualize, potentially by rewiring connections between verbal and visual parts of the brain and addressing any emotional estrangement from the imaginative part of the mind.
It can lead to a permanent shift where consciousness feels more dilated and less separate from the world, resulting in a much better quality of life, reduced emotional reactivity, and a calming effect that can be transmitted to other people.
The primary bottleneck for most writers is emotional self-tolerance and sincerity, as writing about things one cares about or is unsure about involves anxiety and exposure; honesty with oneself is key, with other skills being more easily learned.
Begin with basic happiness maintenance like exercise, sunlight, reducing refined sugar, shortening commute time, and spending more time with friends, as these make the deeper psychological work more manageable.
15 Actionable Insights
1. Embrace Shame with Curiosity
Imagine behaviors or emotions you’re ashamed of, view them curiously, and embrace the physical sensations without judgment, finding them interesting or thrilling. This re-frames aversive emotions, lowers ego defenses, and can lead to profound psychological shifts and phenomenal self-love.
2. Cultivate Phenomenal Self-Love
Move beyond intellectual self-acceptance to deeply accept all your emotions and experiences moment-to-moment, without flinching away from any part of yourself. This reduces inner conflict, enhances connection to the world, and allows for more effective personal change.
3. Relax Mental & Emotional Contractions
Observe how your mind habitually contracts or flinches away from emotions and experiences, especially when anxious. Gently probe these contractions and consciously relax them with loving, patient awareness. This can significantly expand your consciousness and reduce reactivity.
4. Practice Non-Dual Meditation
Engage in practices that dissolve the perceived boundary between self and world, such as deeply inquiring into body sensations or mentally labeling self-sensations as “not me.” This can lead to a more dilated, less reactive, and profoundly more relaxed state of consciousness.
5. Train Visualization (If Aphantasic)
If you have aphantasia, practice exercises like verbally describing a room with eyes open, then immediately trying to do so with eyes closed, to rewire verbal and visual brain connections. Reconnect with childhood imagination to overcome emotional estrangement from fantasizing.
6. Prioritize Basic Happiness Maintenance
Implement fundamental well-being practices: regular exercise, sufficient sunlight exposure, reduced refined sugar intake, shorter commutes, and increased time with friends. These foundational habits significantly ease the path for deeper psychological work.
7. Engage in Combat Sports
Practice combat sports like Brazilian Jujitsu to experience controlled “violence,” which can resolve aggressive cravings and foster comfort with your body, physical contact, and danger. It also provides humbling, ego-reducing experiences.
8. Practice Deep Conversational Attention
When interacting with others, consciously give your maximum, 100% attention to pick up on subtle cues and emotional undercurrents. This enhances conversation quality, makes others feel more relaxed, and deepens your understanding.
9. Explore “Woo” with Discernment
Be open to exploring “woo” or new-age practices, especially if conventional methods haven’t worked, focusing on those that offer experiential truths despite potentially unscientific explanations. Discern carefully, as some can be genuinely valuable.
10. Record Ideas for Writing
Consistently record all essay ideas, even nascent thoughts, using a tool like ThoughtSaver, allowing them to stew and develop over time. This prepares the groundwork for efficient writing when inspiration strikes, reducing unfinished drafts.
11. Write Essays in One Sitting
When inspired, attempt to complete an entire essay draft in a single sitting. This strategy significantly increases the likelihood of finishing the piece, preventing it from languishing in an incomplete state.
12. Cultivate Writing Emotional Tolerance
Develop emotional self-tolerance to write effectively by being willing to honestly face and transmit your true thoughts and feelings, even if they cause anxiety or exposure. Sincerity is less cognitively demanding than inauthenticity and improves writing quality.
13. Have Awkward Conversations
Actively seek out and engage in difficult or uncomfortable conversations that you have been avoiding. This practice is identified as a “final frontier of emotional work” and can lead to significant personal growth.
14. Experiment with Meditation Techniques
Recognize that meditation instructions are often individual and abstract; experiment keenly with various techniques to discover what truly works for you. Subtle shifts in practice can yield profound, personalized results.
15. Consult Recommended Inner Work Resources
For inner work, explore Byron Katie’s “Loving What Is,” Locke Kelly’s non-dual meditation, Michael Ashcroft’s expanded awareness course, and the book “Difficult Conversations.” These resources are suggested for their potential positive impact.
6 Key Quotes
The love you want can only really finally come from inside. Like you have to decide that you're worthwhile. You can't just like get that from writing in a magazine or I couldn't anyway.
Sasha Chapin
The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I change.
Spencer Greenberg
Your psychological defense mechanisms, yeah, like, I don't know how this works from a design perspective, but from a practical perspective, if your psychological defense mechanisms just fell apart the moment they were pointed at, they would be pretty bad defense mechanisms.
Sasha Chapin
Often the good stuff is really hard to find because it sounds kind of similar to the bullshit stuff.
Sasha Chapin
It is just true that everything you experience is in some sense your conscious existence, right? Like color as we perceive it is a creation of the mind. So in some sense, like it is just true that we are surrounded by mind stuff and we're not separate from our conscious experience. But the perception is that we're separate.
Sasha Chapin
I think for most people I have worked on writing with, the real bottleneck around writing isn't verbal skill. It is emotional self-tolerance.
Sasha Chapin
4 Protocols
Existential Kink Shame Embrace Exercise
Sasha Chapin- Imagine the behavior, cycle, or emotion you're ashamed of.
- Imagine it with curiosity, like a child playing with a rock or looking at a painting, rather than judging it morally.
- Try to embrace the sensations that go along with it, experiencing them aesthetically.
- Try to find the feelings thrilling, like getting off on them, to change your view of these typically aversive emotions.
- Encounter the emotion fully to make it more pleasant and interesting, allowing you to stay with it longer and understand its composition and function.
Aphantasia Visualization Training (Conceptual Framework)
Sasha Chapin- Address the idea that aphantasia might be a broken connection between different brain areas (verbal and visual).
- Perform exercises like opening your eyes, looking around a room and verbally describing all the different parts of it, and then closing your eyes and trying to do the same thing immediately thereafter.
- Consider if there's an emotional component, like being emotionally estranged from the part of your mind that imagines and fantasizes.
- Try to connect to that younger, imaginative part of yourself and affirm that imagining things is fine and safe.
Cultivating Inner Psychological Change
Sasha Chapin- Recognize that habitual mental contractions (like flinching away from emotions) are a lens through which you perceive the world.
- Notice these contractions and try to relax them, turning the 'lens' on itself.
- Go through your day, observing when you flinch away from emotions or when subtle moments cause you to seize up.
- Gently but insistently probe these areas, seeing how you can relax them and bring a loving, patient awareness to all of these unexamined facets.
Spencer Greenberg's Essay Writing Process
Spencer Greenberg- Think about the essay topic for months or years, recording any ideas using a tool like ThoughtSaver.
- When inspiration strikes, sit down and try to write the entire essay in one sitting.
- If the essay is too large for one sitting, acknowledge the risk of it remaining unfinished in drafts.
- Leverage the long period of prior thought to facilitate getting ideas onto the page quickly during the writing session.