That’s not the best way to phrase it, but hopefully communicated my meaning.

Now, on the other hand, there’s no way that I would ever do that. I refuse to be untrue to myself in that way. If I can pick up information from observation, or if my ability to analyze people was of use, I would certainly consider helping out with that type of thing, but not the undercover type of thing.

When I didn’t know who I was, it was easy to be anyone, and have it not bother me. Now that I am understanding more and more of who I am, and making more and more of it a conscious choice, I am coming to understand the strength that comes from being who I am all the way through.

All that being said, I didn’t really answer your question. I think that such people, in this fallen world, are necessary, much in the same way as soldiers. I think it is a shame that it is necessary, and I feel that people who take either route are voluntarily sacrificing some of their own potential for growth in order to serve their country in a role that it needs.

And I suppose some people can actually BE true to themselves in that sort of role, if that’s part of who they are. It’s just not part of who I am, at least any more, and not, to the best of my knowledge, part of the makeup of most people.

“Jason: I understand what you’re saying, Mark, about the borrowed standards, and I agreed above, but my point is that you’re not ACTUALLY using the standards you claim to be using, unless they’re black and white. You’re using what you think those standards are like based on seeing them from the outside…”

“Mark: True, your perception of other’s standards. Hopefully one’s perception is accurate enough for the distinction to be irrelevant.”

I was just thinking about what you two are saying and wondered then how you’d consider someone like an undercover officer or a spy… I imagine it would be a delicate balancing act maintaining their own point of view but needing to understand and oftentimes act according to an alternative point of view which if they actually end up embracing leads to consequences just as dire as being seen as “acting” their alternative point of view.

In another experiment people in a high-effort weight loss program, where the effort was directed to irrelevant tasks (e.g., tongue twisters) lost more weight than those in a low-effort program. So even though the tasks had no direct impact on their weight, they did have an impact through the change in attitude the amount of effort induced.

In both cases it could be that people justified the effort involved, and by doing so invoked their full attention, thereby making it easier to see their options and make a choice. And self-justification is something people seem to devote a lot of energy to, even if it doesn’t seem that way at the time.

Erin:
Clarity is not a verb to me, it’s an adverb. It is, as you said, thinking something like “My thinking is clear”, but clear is describing thinking, hence adverb. And I understand what you’re saying about Jenny, but I simply don’t think of that as clarity… clarity to me is how well I see things without distortion in order to add them to my patterns in the proper places… not how well I understand something I did or chose in the past. I can see other people using it that way, but it just doesn’t work that way for me.

To simplify - if clarity is a synonym of clear, it appears Jason is talking about clarity in terms of “My thinking is clear. This is clarity as an act or action. On the other hand, Jenny is talking about clarity in terms of “The decision is clear, or as a final point or a decision. This subtlety in definitions seems to me where the hang-up is. But, of course, correct me if I’m wrong.

Good work on overcoming your depression! Very good

I’ve suffered from depression in the past, but thankfully not enough to need medication. And I’ve only seen a psychologist once. And even then dealing with it took ages. I guess we just see change in different ways. To me the fact that it took a while before depression stopped after the decision was made made me believe my change wasn’t instant, nor complete. I haven’t been truly depressed for years, though sometimes still lonely (my diary says not even that at all this year. woo!). However getting to this point took a hell of a lot of self-reflection and learning to accept myself, even though as I said, my depression was probably fairly mild in comparison.

I was recently reading about cognitive dissonance. Apparently the more dissonance one experiences, the easier it is to make the change required to dissolve the dissonance. In other words, if two beliefs conflict, the greater the conflict, the easier it is to change one or both beliefs to stop feeling distraught. Perhaps that’s why it was harder for me to believe what I needed to in order to end my depression; i.e., the war between my sense of high self-worth and the opposing sense of low self-worth was more like a final border scuffle just before a treaty is signed, than a war.

btw, see this post of mine for some more of my musings on this topic, in relation to beliefs.

And sure, write that article

Erin, yeah, I’ve been through that too. I’m pretty sure that’s been the way of all changes of mine that are linked to habits, including habitual thoughts (which includes depression).

My point wasn’t that it’s easy, or that anybody can do it whenever they want, just that it is possible, and people do change, so it’s worth giving them the chance without waiting for concrete evidence (that they have changed).