Yellow_Girl

Hello! I recently found this community as part of a search for the reasons why no one seemed to see the world as I do. I grew up excessively Mormon, but left after I found out the religion wasn't a full description of reality. From there I went to college and studied both philosophy and psychology, especially linguistics. On day one of my intro to philosophy course, I realized I wasn't to find truth there either. Everyone argued for their beliefs so vehemently that it wasn't hard to see that no one was "right." They were simply exhibiting their own subjective point of view. I coined this term "belief-mongering" and saw it everywhere I went but no one talked about it. No one saw the pattern. So I began to look for people who had already realized this and found and read more than 3,000 books on all kinds of personal development topics. I started a business and since I'm alone all day shipping in a warehouse I listen to them on 1.5x speed and get through a book a day. I've been doing this for about seven years. I recently and joyfully discovered spiral dynamics (thanks, Leo) and realized I'm very yellow. I don't have any beliefs, just cause and effect predictions that are either maximally effective or minimally effective. I became interested in systems thinking and even wrote a book on systems before I found the spiral (yet to be published). I gave up afterlife predictions and most black and white thinking. My chief problem these days is that this is a very lonely way to see the world. I recently attended a funeral for a close family member and listened with interest to all the descriptions of my family's afterlife beliefs. Some of my family talked of heaven (blue), one man who came from Samoa talked about animals taking part in the afterlife (purple), some talked only of the deceased achievements and how they hoped to achieve as much (orange), etc etc. It was dizzying and interesting! There was even a lot of red behavior from the children of the deceased, fighting with each other for "stuff." Driving home, I talked of all the beliefs with my husband and children and how we all have different ways of looking at what happens and how that is integral to culture and upbringing. I had the sense that none of them understood what I was talking about. They could only see within the confines of their belief structures. The very LANGUAGE I was using appeared not to make sense to them. My spouse is very green and he sees things in a very kind, green way, but does not fathom yellow. Other attempts at communicating systems thinking to people in other spiral categories have led to a profound lack of understanding and more belief mongering. This has been going on for a very long time now. Even my highly-educated, well-read friends appear to be in green in that they insist their way is "right." I am recently struck with the sorrow of how lonely it feels to think in ways that are not in alignment with the culture. I am hitting something of a wall of dilemmas. Here they are: - Are yellow ideals just another form of belief-centrism and should they, therefore, be hidden from the world? Should yellow communicate their point of view to others? - How does one build a social life around a community that is only interested in belief-mongering and flaunting orange status or blue and green virtues? - Is profound acceptance and tolerance of all belief systems enough to satisfy an evolutionary urge to connect with others given the fact that we sort according to interests and beliefs? - If we are all system drones, and free will is non-existent, how must we live with such knowledge? - How can one love others and progress to turquoise if one feels so separate? - If one has a greater awareness of systems, how does one ethically use this? It feels a lot like manipulation. - How does one feel grounded when one realizes there is no ground? Is grounding necessary? If all beliefs are suspect, then how can one progress through life with such knowledge? - How does one live in the material world when one feels how immaterial it all is? These questions are on my mind almost constantly now. It's a lot of questions but I think it boils down to the idea that how can one exist in the matrix when one begins to see the code, and others do not seem to. I am not nieve enough to think I see the whole picture yet, by any means, but it's starting to reveal itself and I am terrified. I'm only 38 and the thought of living another 40-50 years like this seems to be a painful lot. If only I'd learned this stuff later in life.

I call it SAD . . . and I am profoundly influenced by it! But I live in a state where we have extreme weather fluctuations. HOT and FREEZING. Hardly ever in between. I want to move but our lives are rooted here and my needs are pretty low on the list. Kids school first, husbands job second. My business can operate anywhere.

I figured this out a long time ago. Time was invented so that not everything happens at once.

Ha ha. This discussion cracked me up! The answer is "it depends." Why generalize? Why put people into categories? Also, you can never answer this question because any answer would transform into a "belief" and no beliefs are correct, they are only future predictions of outcomes and can only be validated when the outcome comes to pass. But because outcomes are also subjective, they still cannot be evaluated objectively unless the outcome was binary or math-based. Keep working on personal development and historical learning and reading other points of view until you realize the above. Maybe take a humanities course at the school. Also, I really hate masculine and feminine teachings because they just slap words on people and call it a real description. It isn't. The answer is "it depends."

This is a wonderful gift! You are infinetly curious! Rather than worry about it, allow yourself to explore this crazy reality. I know many people who have three or four college degrees. They love learning THAT MUCH.

Coincidences can be easily explained with mathematics. Humans can take in three items of stimuli every second. This adds up to 1.8 million bits of stimuli per week. Given that number, it's highly probable that two unrelated stimuli will arrive in your awareness within that time span. But I personally think it's the matrix breaking down

This is an interesting read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Denial_of_Death I think the awareness of death is very important for completing your immortality projects, which give life meaning. I'm personally not suicidal but am excited to find out what is or isn't after death. It's the greatest mystery of all. And how odd would it be if there was nothing.

I have an answer that is entirely theoretical, but it really makes sense when it comes to my situation and there are many psychologists who agree with this assessment. I'm not silly enough to think that this covers all depression, but certainly the "lack of motivation" style. Depression stems from a cause and effect mismatch. Or, "learned helplessness" (Google it if you haven't heard of it). Meaning, you do something because you think it will produce an outcome. When it fails to produce the outcome over and over again, it hurts you emotionally, which causes you to feel like laying low so you can heal. Nature gave this to you to keep you from accidentally killing yourself. If you put your hand on a hot stove, thinking the stove is not on, it burns. The only way to heal the hand is to stop using it for a few days. If you kept touching the stove, you'd die of an infection. In modern life we must fail ALL THE TIME to get what we want because we are in high competition with each other. After a string of painful failures, your protection mode gets activated and you crawl into your cave to heal. Your dopamine gets very low and you don't feel like doing anything. I have found only two cures for it and it seems to work for me much of the time. 1 - I do a fasting stint. Fasting opens your dopamine channels so you "seek out food" which gives you motivation. Of course the "need to seek" isn't just for food, it applies to anything you want. Just a 24-hour fast helps my depression quite a lot. 2 - The idea that "doing things does not require motivation, it CAUSES motivation." The simple act of setting a timer on your phone and saying "for two minutes, I will research that trip I want to go on" will break the inertia and cause you to have more motivation. Do enough strings of this, and you can do all the things you've wanted to do. I really hope some of this helped. It took me many painful years to figure this out.

#lifegoals

Lots and lots of poop. Think Shawshank Redemption.

Wow! I came back here and didn't expect to see so many replies. Thanks everyone, I need to go through and read and understand. I'm sorry if I was triggered on Monday. I should have known better. I'll not run away. In fact, I'll read and respond to this stuff during my next break!

Me! To my surprise, I lost interest in fiction & most movies and TV in my early 30's (now I'm 38). It was REALLY sad. It took me a really long time to unpack why. I think that much of pop culture is based upon people in a more purple/red/blue spiral and I had started to move into Orange. Self-help, motivation books, etc became my most loved type of read. I swear I read it all! But more recently, those have started to seem sort of childish to me. Now I'm more interested in crazy complex stuff. Like really hard to understand tombs on reality and systemic thinking, even mathematics and physics. It's just a part of growing up! But I must say I really miss fiction and I have a theory that it will come around again and I will be able to enjoy more of it in the future. It's like when your favorite stuffed bunny stops talking to you when you are 11 years old. It's so sad! But you know it doesn't "work" anymore and you have to put her in the closet. You'll visit her sometimes, but you no longer sleep together.

Thank you for all the replies so far. I'm going to go read Don Beck's book again. I believe I'm hitting a transformational dilemma. I am sad that we see the spiral as yet another way to form hierarchies and that expressing yellow is like telling someone you have a second home in the Hamptons. I have done a lot of work and these are conclusions I have come to, it is the way I see the world but I am looking for solutions to transcend this. I did feel attacked and ridiculed on this board where I came for a discussion on the topic of issues with certain belief structures. I will keep looking for a place to be understood, or at least find comfort in not being understood. Maybe this is impossible. Being human is hard. Bye.

hug

It's not a requirement of mine. It's just that when we evaluate situations, I get a lot of belief-mongering. I get a lot of "my beliefs are right" -- as yellow, I don't think beliefs can be "right", only "effective and ineffective". Once you see that, you start to realize that much of human interaction is just belief-mongering. Maybe none of you see this yet perhaps. No amount of hugging can make someone feel understood.

I am not trying to call myself yellow to tout that I am special or whatever. I just am yellow. I know this because it's literally the way I think! That's why I was so happy to find the spiral, because it was an EXACT description of how I think. I do get out there. I have many friends and family. It is not from lack of human connection this stems. I am surrounded by love on all sides. It is a lack of being understood. Unfortunately, people do group themselves based on belief. This has been extremely well documented. Ajastaya, I don't think you have the wisdom I am looking for. Does anyone else understand this or is this just me talking jibberish?

Premise one - I have beliefs that others don't have Premise two - I am required by my biology to connect Premise three - People connect based on shared beliefs Conclusion - Therefore, I can't connect. There's an explanation using propositional logic. Sorry Leo, for using academic philosophy

No problems with my husband, he's wonderful. My children are in their teens and do listen to me but don't quite understand. I don't degrade where they are in the spiral. That would be unethical in my opinion. I suppose the issue is simply that I appear to be at a different vMEME than many people out there. It is like seeing different shades of blue than others and trying to describe how "blue" looks to one another.

I really liked that video. These guys reached the same conclusions I did before I knew about them.

I don't really believe the world should change, honestly. I am looking to what I should do to change. I very much understand that I can't make the world change. I've tried and that doesn't work. But at the same time there appear to be contradictory systems at work here. My biology requires me to connect with others, as does my knowledge of effective systems. But my viewpoint makes the connection very hard since there is a lack of understanding. Kind of like what we're doing right now. Prime example. Shin, I appreciate the kindness.

Based on the limited information you gave us, it's really hard to know what you should do. I personally empathize with you, though! I started a business many years ago and had to wade through massive amounts of shit to get it off the ground. I kept going through all the really hard days and just pushing and pushing and pushing. I found out that it did help my community quite a bit but I had to give everything to make it happen. I have a theory though, difficult and maybe impossible to prove, but here goes: - If it's not working, you must gather more data and learn more systems. It's possible you need a paradigm shift. Learning sets you free. - If it's still not working, you may need to realize that it's not the right time for this. We judge each other these days based on material success when often it is a lot of lucky line ups. Understand that you are more than this judgment. Also, between you and me, money doesn't give you the happiness you crave. I haven't found out what does. Maybe Leo knows. I hope you are able to push on in this tough world.

I will check it out! Me too, always searching. Please expand what you mean here. I do often express to others what I believe but have simply found it ineffective. Perhaps the real problem is that I have not found an effective method of communication.

I think humans care about a few things quite a lot. One of them is how resources are allocated. It is in everyone's best interest that those resources are allocated in the best possible way.

Red is a selfish vMeme that is pretty low on the spiral. If you weren't able to go through it at around age 12-18 then you will regress back to it in times of trouble. People who grew up excessively religious aren't often allowed to go through red. It will present itself in the following ways: sexual adventure, stepping on others for personal gain, anger, preoccupation with brute ways of getting what you want, bullying, seizing by force, manipulation and passive-aggressive punishment. I went through a red phase in my late twenties and experienced all of the above. I grew up Mormon and could not embody red at the time. It came out without me understanding the spiral. It wasn't pretty and I hurt others. I am not sure if it has a positive channel, as in, martial arts. That's more "blue" to me. Assertiveness only came to me after I progressed through red, though. I'm female and it came through in telling people to piss off when they were on my territory or making me feel uncomfortable. I also use it in relationships when being told I'm not good enough. I stand up for myself a lot and no longer suffer fools.