I'm finishing a book I bought last summer at a train station
in Prague- International Best Seller Thinking Fast and Slow. It's
an exploration of human decision-making based on the extraordinary life
and career of Nobel Prize Winner Daniel Kahneman. I've found the entire
book useful, but the concept I share to today is endowment.
The second limb of yoga is observances(Niyama) and includes non-hoarding. If the freedom I felt backpacking hadn’t
rid me of hoarding habits, my impromptu move to Dallas did. I suddenly
possessed only the contents of the backseat of a small SUV. I was so withdrawn that most of what I owned lacked any semblance of
sentimental value.
It took a few months for me to unpack non-essentials. My best friend made
a keep sake box my junior year; I opened the lid with hesitation. I blamed my worst qualities for the changes that separated then from now. One at
a time I connected myself to moments captured in photographs. I rifled through
faded tickets from concerts, sporting events, and movies I hadn’t remembered
attending.
Most of the photos are now pinned to my wall. Until four o’clock today I
proudly claimed the remaining contents of that keepsake box as the only items in
my room not intended for regular use. As usually happens when I get an idea for
my next post, God appeared with an authenticity challenge. Today he came in the
form of my mother lovingly presenting me with another huge box of clothes from
storage. So a night of overthinking awaits wrestling and prioritizing memories
tied to the sundress I haven’t seen since a first date and the “hot” outfit I
never wore even though my friends helped me pick it out.
At some point I decided against being a
psychologist, so if your level of skepticism requires statistical and
experimental detail I strongly recommend you read Kahneman’s Thinking Fast
and Slow for yourself. As a substitute yoga teacher and amateur blogger, I
feel obligated to share one such experiment in which half a sample of
participants was given coffee mugs. The price endowed participants reported for
their university mug was higher on average than the value given by their
mugless counterparts.
Most reading this didn’t need an illustration; we know we can be risk
averse to the point of forfeiting potential gains. Risks can be unreasonable
and loss is painful on a physiological level, but studies like this clearly show
our cultural tendency to avoid even reasonable exchanges once we have
considered something to be ours. Economic uncertainty certainly plays into my
hoard of choice- stinginess; however research, including but not limited to
Kahneman and his team's, demonstrates that experienced traders are less risk-adverse.
Ideally a restrained yogi would be so rooted that the illusion of
possession would lose its appeal, surrendering to the inevitable ebb and flow of wealth. Kahneman encourages us to adopt a less
attached approach in our thinking as well. “How much do I want to have this
mug, compared with the other things I could have instead?” We see probabilities
more clearly without the emotional pressure of potential loss, clarity improves
decision making, and confidence in our own decisions is the most reliable
insurance policy.
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