Learned Helplessness in Daily Life

 

Daily Life Examples of Societal Conditioning

In this article, we'll be looking at how decision making needs to be looked at for few trivial decisions in life to maximize happiness

1. Brushing your teeth

From the time we're kids we're told oral hygiene is important. You need to brush your teeth daily. Some people brush once a day, some people twice and some may be more than that. Assume the question I'm posing to you is how many times is the ideal number of times you should brush your teeth. 

People generally think of brushing as a good oral hygiene improving activity. Fair. But did you know that brushing your teeth has negative effects on your body? You can use do extensive research using GPT/google to know this but essentially while more brushing helps improve oral hygiene, the chemicals used in the paste has a seriously negative effect on your body which atleast I didn't know until recently. It has a mild effect equivalent to taking certain form of synthenic hard drugs people use for recreational use. So where do you draw the line b/w what is the right number of times you should brush your teeth.

WHO recommends twice a day and atleast personally, I've seen most people in my friend circle sticking to this norm. Assume that that's in the morning and night. What if in the afternoon, I take a very heavy meal and i have food particles stuck b/w my teeth Will I stick to the "societal conditioning" from WHO that you only do it twice a day or will i act on my gutmeter and brush if i feel the need. I would do it whenever i feel the need by blindly following the gutmeter. And i was doing it more times daily until recently i got to know about the negative effects of brushing. That became new input to my brain and my gutmeter needle got changed and now again, I brush whenever I want and make myself happy in the process. Somedays thrice. Some days once. Again, reiterating my point from before. there's no right or wrong answer. What your gutmeter tells you is always right for the moment. 

2. Sleeping

How many hours of sleep should you have daily?

I've heard some doctors say 8 hours. Some say 6-7 hours. Is there a right answer? I don't believe so. I operate on the model where I naturally go to sleep when my gutmeter makes me want to sleep. Some days I'm physically exhausted,  mentally drained and my brain, mind and body needs more rest. Then I brain knows all that and makes me sleep extra - may be 8 hours Some days, I haven't exerted enough. I'm  already well rested where even 2 hours of sleep is more than sufficient for me. If you say that doctors recommend so many hours of sleep, I'm telling you that that's conditioning at play. If you say that that's research backed, my response might seem drastic - According to my theory, these doctors are mentally because they themselves are conditioning by a million societal notions. That's why for the same disease if you go to 2 different doctors, they gave 2 different routes/medications and neither of which can guarantee the result. Science needs to be precise and predictable. You don't need to agree with me on this. My personal view is that doctors who formulated the medical recommendations were mentally blinded as well because of which I don't totally buy that science because of which I will not accept a recommendation from a doctor on how many hours I should sleep, which in itself doctors don't have a consensus on. 

Bigger point here being do your gutmeter tells you blindly. If you're already well rested and you sleep for 5 hours and wake up, don't confuse yourself thinking that you should have slept for 8 hours because that societal conditioning making you a confused person.

If you are telling me that two doctors, one suggesting 6 hours of sleep and another suggesting 8 hours of sleep - that both are scientific. I'm sorry. I refuse to accept that.

If i child is growing up without no adults in the world conditioning him or her that so many hours of sleep required, the child would reach an evolutionary equilibrium in terms of the hours of sleep. That equilibrium if any can be reached only if the child makes mistakes on deciding how many people hours he should sleep daily. That input will be given by the gutmeter and the brain progressively naturally experientially learns what should be the ideal number in hours the human should sleep. I still feel that the equilibrium will never be reached because it depends on your brain activity everyday and everyday will be unique. Hence. Rest required everyday will be unique which is known to the brain which influences the gutmeter which makes you sleep as and when it wants making you happy in the process..
Setting stupid societal notions like 8 hours sleep should be there or 6 hours sleep should be there (on which itself medical science is not consistent) confuses humans. Humans who are conditioned illogically by X number of hours start getting confused why they don't sleep so much. The answer is so simple and it's right out there. You just need to grab the banana as the monkey by blindly following your gutmeter
I discussed with my wife who is a doctor on this and let me give you additional perspective. Scientifically it is proven that your brain needs rest. I accept that. Scientifically it is proven that it's at night time, the brain has a natural pattern  of putting the body to rest and waking it up ( the body's natural clock) which uses the time during the rest period to clear the build up of toxins and waste products that occur during the day. What that means is evolutionarily, it is logically clear why humans sleep at night for getting this rest which also I'm comfortable accepting.

What I'm not comfortable accepting is sciences recommendation on the number of hours you should sleep. Science says that you need to have on average so many cycles of rem sleep, deep sleep etc. Science has conducted experimental tests on humans and has taken an AVERAGE of what should be the ideal number of hours required for humans to sleep. Let's for the sake of discussion assume that that number is 8 hours and consistent across all medical scientific experiments

Now the operating word I want you to focus on is average. Ideally science needs to plant a brain activity capturing device in the brains of every single human on the planet which measures brain activity and at the end of the day, that sensor should analyse the data and based on amount of rest required for the day, the sensor should recommend at a hyperpersonalised level what is the number of hours of sleep required by you for the night. That is the ideal number of hours is rest you require and if you sleep too much / too less compared to this number, then you test it out for a doctor recommended period of time and if it is not coming closer to the actual number recommended by the sensor, then you consult a doctor for help

But such a sensor/devicee doesn't exist

So currently  you accept the doctor's recommendation of 8  hours of sleep. Now at a hyper personalised level, assume the sensor would have told you you need only only 7  hours of sleep for the day . But you think that 8 hours is required and you try sleeping. Your brain is well rested by 7 hours and you wake up. Now you suddenly feel like you're not well rested because of science's conditioning of 8 hours. That makes you confused. Some days the body and brain might require only 3 hours of sleep. For instance, today I slept for 3.5 hours and I was super rested.  So had I been conditioned by science's 8 hours, I would have started questioning my body and if this repeats over so many days. I'll start being concerned and go to a doctor to seek help. And people do do that where they are prescribed sleep inducing medication which affects the brain and body in other different negative ways additionally. And that has long term negative impact

So point being, if you blindly follow your gutmeter, sleep when you want as per the signal given by the gutmeter, the brain will give you sufficient rest and it'll wake you up at the right time. You'll have control over your body clock.

This is my take on this topic. Big picture message is to show that conditioning on such a simple thing like sleep can confuse people, have long term negative impact on their brains and bodies through things like sleep inducing medication which a ton of people on the planet take. Reiterating, equilibrium is to blindly follow your gutmeter. Happiness is a natural output.

I had used content till above and posted this article. Then on my personal family group with my brother Jacob, sister in law Aswathy and wife Merin (who is a doctor), there was a discussion on this. I think it's worth sharing screenshots from the chat as some of you might have concerns similar to what my wife and brother/sis in law had. So, i'm changing the style of messaging to whatsapp screenshots just to put across few important points. My wife calls me Jo and I'm father is referred to here as Appa for your reference and Heads up is the name of our whatsapp group. 

These are 2 examples of societal conditioning affecting our daily lives at a practical level.

Profit Maximization vs Customer Experience Maximization

Next, I want to tackle a complex societal notion that affects us all. Expect some resistance; those doubts stem from your conditioned mindset. Let’s explore how businesses should be designed. I will present a theoretical framework proving that the current profit-maximization model is based on societal beliefs rather than sound logic.

Instead, the focus should be on maximizing long-term value for all stakeholders. This upcoming post will challenge conventional norms and is designed to help entrepreneurs and business owners shift from solving fictitious problems to addressing real customer needs. If you’ve made it this far, look out for my detailed analysis next Saturday. I consult independently for startups on business model design.

To summarize, profit maximization is an outdated societal concept lacking logic. The true objective should be customer experience maximization, which is often treated as a secondary metric. Capital constraints are a reality, but imagine if you had infinite resources—how would you redesign your business model to create a self-sustaining, infinite revenue loop? Determine the investment needed to set up this positive cycle, as that’s what you’ll seek from investors or family.

Currently, most businesses prioritize profit or shareholder value, relegating customer experience (measured by Net Promoter Score, or NPS) to a secondary role. My business model flips this—NPS becomes the primary metric, and I’ll invest heavily to achieve a score of 90+ before marketing my product. This may seem straightforward, but I’ll illustrate how NPS-driven design fundamentally differs from profit-driven design, revealing the true power of prioritizing customer experience. You've already read about this in my earlier post. 

These are just few of the learnings I've had over the last 10 years. I've unshocked myself of several strong societal conditioning which has gotten me access to the infinite human potential and makes me live a happy life no matter what. 

To understand how I reached this point—and how you can attain lasting happiness—you’ll need to engage with some powerful logic. Picture this journey as a bridge of logic you will traverse. Be aware that rewiring your mindset takes time, but this is your starting point. If you're interested, please proceed forward. 

I’ll begin with a story that was pivotal in my life—one that transformed everything. If you’re ready, let’s dive into that first story. It's going to be a slightly long read where I talk about my personal experiences over the last 10 years. If you're looking at only the academic part of it, it's very hard to take just that part out of the equation and present. It's my life story. The rest of the articles constitute my autobiography/memoir with certain very unique thoughts/observations that I've noted. 

You're entering the Bridge of Logic. 

Welcome to the Firm