• 
    Operating the Creature You Inhabit
  
  
  •    Start Here
  •    Dependence
  •    Learning to Steer
  •    Optical Illusions
  •    The Soul Illusion
• 
    Will & the Illusion of Will
  
  
  •    Two Minds
  •    Determinism
  •    Exercising Will
  •    True Grit
  •    Enhancing Willpower
  •   Perseverance
• 
     Pathology
  
  
  •    The Study of Paths
  •    Matching Considerations
  •    The Impeccable Path
  •    What it Means to Decide
  •    The Open Path
  •    The Enlightened Path
  •    The Truth Wants to Set You Free
  •    An Exquisite Irony
• 
     Emotion Focused Coping
  
  
  •    Coping with Raw Experience
  •    Attachment to Outcomes
  •    Meta-Cognitive Awareness
  •    Mindfulness & Awakening
  •    Curiosity & Being
  •    The Serenity Prayer
  •    The Power of a Will
  •    Hypnosis as Covert Doing
  •    Intention and Attention
  •    Ordinary Trances
  •    Hypnotic Exercises
• 
     Problem Focused Coping
  
  
  •   Stages of Change
  •   Your Core Motivation
  •   Contemplation
  •   The Decision Matrix
  •   The Decision
  •   The Action Stage
  •   The Traps
  •   Action Fork
• 
     Training Tools
  
  
  •    Puppy Training
  •   Warning Signals
  •   Coping Tactics
  •   The Reminder Card
  •   Your Treatment Plan
• 
     Personal Research
  
  
  •   Study the Past
  •   Cheap Research
  •    Hardening
  •    The End

The Contemplation Stage

The education of the will is the object of our existence

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Exercising your will implies that you know what you want. The critical task of the Contemplation Stage is to specify your Core Motivation. Contemplation exercises provide an opportunity to focus on meaning and how you want to dedicate the time and energy you have. Some people have firm convictions or a clear appreciation of their core motivation and are able to specify it without further work. If you are able to specify your core motivation now, please feel free to do so in the Core Motivation section of your Treatment Plan.

Many people have never really thought about what they really want and how to dedicate their energies. Others have considered it, but have not reached a conclusion. Evidently, you have come to a point in your life where you must become aware of your core motivation. If you are not driven from within you will be driven by external sources of motivation. The exercises in this section are designed to help you discover or create your core motivation.

Contemplation

The Contemplation Exercise involves posing a question such as: "What do I really want?" and then letting the mind explore, without editing, the thoughts and images your mind generates. Investing cognitive resources in a contemplative investigation is interesting in the short term and, over the long term, may show you the way to the most profound of payoffs.

For the purpose of personal research, structured contemplation exercises can shed light on your hierarchy of motivations.You can explore issues of meaning by using these and other exercises to look inward, and you can continue to examine your values until you have resolved your ambivalence about what you really want and what must be sacrificed to get it. Here are some questions to get you started:

• Who am I and where am I going?
• What is meaningful for me?
• What do I stand for?
• What do I really want for my finite life span?
• What must I do to get what I want?

Thus Spake Zarathustra

Another invitation to self-discovery was suggested by Nietzsche. His protagonist, Zarathustra describes two roads:

"One leads from the past, the other from the future, meeting at a gateway where I now stand (the present moment). But the complex of causes in which I am entangled will recur — it will create me again! I am part of these causes of the eternal recurrence. I shall return, with this sun, with this earth . . . not to a new life or a similar life. I shall return eternally to this identical and self-same life, in the greatest things and in the smallest, to teach once more the recurrence of all things."

Nietzsche was proud of his 'discovery' of Eternal Recurrence, and there is more to it than at first meets the eye. The value of this exercise is unrelated to the validity of the concept; instead, the focus is on the choices you would make if it were true. Suspending your disbelief and acting as if this weird premise was valid can reveal your core motivation.