Progressive motivation systems, criterion velocity, and samadhi

Progressive motivation systems, criterion velocity, and samadhi

We navigate the present moment through our accumulated learning, habits, intentions, and evolutionary drives responding to other people and the world. We have instincts to create expectations and associations, to feel pleasure and pain, and to move towards or away from everything.

All our actions, thoughts, and feelings are intertwined with motivation systems. On a primitive level, we’re motivated by our shifting states of consciousness. Our Shadow self—our adaptive unconscious—takes inputs from the world and ourselves, processes them, and guides us with constantly shifting states of consciousness involving feelings, beliefs, memories (what neuroscientists call “working memories”), and action impulses. All instincts and drives are motivation systems, layered together each moment and directing our thoughts and actions,

Much of what we do is goal driven. I want to win, be better, achieve goals, please others, please myself, reduce anxiety, avoid shame, be secure, be gratified, attack an object of anger, etc. All these drives are motivation systems that mature as we mature.

Small children with more neurons and fewer circuits are impulsive and the “I want right now,” motivation system is prominent. Grade schoolers add “I want to fit into important roles and groups.” Older adolescents add “I want to be true to my emerging self-identity.” More post-modern people add “I want to contribute to universal care and rights.” 

A through line for all motivation systems is, “How satisfied am I with my progress at this moment?”

An early developing effective motivation system is, “I’m rarely if ever satisfied with my progress,” which is a winning strategy! Continuing effort and progress works miracles! But chronic dissatisfaction ultimately becomes exhausting and depressing. Some conclude, “I’m a fraud,” or “I’ll never feel good enough.”

If we grow, we run into the emotional limitations of never-good-enough systems and hunger for more comfortable and prosocial always-growing-always-satisfied systems.

Enter criterion velocity.

Criterion Velocity

Our subjective sense of the rate we make progress towards a goal is our criterion velocity—a term borrowed from physics and applied to human motivation. More specifically, it’s the ratio for perceived progress over expected progress. Ideally the ratio is 1—expected progress equals perceived progress.

If I go on a walk and expect to go 2 miles and only go one mile, I might have a criterion velocity of .5. If I go 2 miles I’m more likely to have a criterion velocity of 1—my perceived progress has equaled my expected progress. 

Essentially any progress becomes satisfactory progress when our criterion velocity is 1. If we’re generally satisfied with our criterion velocity in most pursuits, we expect success sooner or later and enjoy the ride. If we’re dissatisfied with our criterion velocity (our perceived progress rarely meets our goals), we expect faster progress, resent problems, feel like failures, and have painful self-identifications.

The trap of having a criterion velocity of less than one—meaning we don’t feel our effort/progress ever meets expectations—is that we continually improve while never fulling enjoying it.

Of course, like everything, a criterion velocity of 1 can have an unhealthy side.

In a Calvin and Hobbes comic, Calvin (a mischievous eight-year-old) and his classmate Susie are looking at their graded papers. Calvin says, “It’s a C! I knew I could do it!”

Susie says, “I got an A. How can you be so happy with a C?”

Calvin says, “I’ve found I enjoy life much more with low expectations.” 

Satisfaction with continuing progress feels good—it leads us to radical acceptance, the gold standard of spiritual development. As we adjust expectations to radical acceptance of what is, effort and progress are always satisfactory, and our criterion velocity is almost always 1. Radical acceptance plus the subjective sense of progress is relaxing and liberating.

Radical acceptance is a version of one of the classic recipes for happiness—expect everything to be exactly as it is.

This is a never-ending yoga. “Everything” is always changing, and we constantly influence and are influenced by our complex world, the people we encounter, and our accumulated learning and habits.

Criterion velocity of any project, goal, or process emerges naturally. How I feel about expectations matching progress shapes my self-esteem and self-acceptance. These are feelings about feelings—meta-emotions. Having meta-emotions of satisfaction and radical acceptance is awesome in every sense of the word!

Taboos

All cultures, from families to nations, have taboos—deeply rooted rational and non-rational inhibitions that everyone feels and mostly follows. Some family cultures (or other cultures) have taboos about criterion velocities of 1. There is systemic bias towards dissatisfaction as virtuous and satisfaction as weak. This was particularly common in my childhood cultures of family, school, and sports, but is becoming less so. Growth mindset criterion velocity 1 systems have gaining popularity ever since I started paying attention decades ago.

Some taboos are based in instinctual drives. For instance, the incest taboo is universal in human societies. Inbreeding is genetic suicide for any species.

Some taboos are cultural. Until the 1950s in the U.S. there were major taboos at different religions marrying (Jews, Catholics, protestants, etc.), and to this day there are still taboos at interracial marriage in many cultural enclaves.

Some taboos are unique to specific families. For instance, after a divorce a wife might have repulsion and aversion to her ex, creating a taboo at feeling or expressing any positive thought or reference to the father that she inadvertently passes on to her children. The taboo can help her move through the grieving process and be available to new partners—in other words, the taboo is potentially highly adaptive and useful for her. To her son needing a relationship with his absent father, this taboo can be devastating, leaving him feeling isolated and unacceptable. This can be especially painful if his mom remarries and wants the new family to be everybody’s primary identification.

Psychotherapy with adults suffering from such taboos is tricky. Adults conflicted about their interior taboos might not even know why they feel conflicted, ashamed, or worthless. Upon inquiry, the taboos often show up.

It helps people to realize the origins of conflicts. Internalized taboos disturb your psyche like an undigested meal disturbs your stomach. When there is a taboo against effort-and-progress-criterion-velocity-1 motivation systems, people in therapy will often complain to me, “No matter how much I succeed, no matter how much I try to be good, I always end up feeling inadequate and ashamed.”

I tell them, “You will never succeed your way out of a never-satisfied- motivation system. To feel less stressed and more self-affirming, you need to grow towards always-growing-always-satisfied.”

Which brings us to samadhi.

Feeling radical acceptance is the core of samadhi—fully present and one with all the states and stages in the known universe. Radical acceptance, radical gratitude, radical love—criterion velocity of 1.