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I Can’t Get No Satisfaction: Lincoln Stoller Of Mind Strength Balance On Why So Many Of Us Are…

I Can’t Get No Satisfaction: Lincoln Stoller Of Mind Strength Balance On Why So Many Of Us Are Feeling Unsatisfied & What We Can Do About It

An Interview With Drew Gerber

Emotions summarize knowledge. If you don’t like what you feel, it’s because you’re not happy with what you know. Emotions guide you by telling you what to feel, not what to do. They are not reasons to act, they are a reflection of you.

From an objective standpoint, we are living in an unprecedented era of abundance. Yet so many of us are feeling unsatisfied. Why are we seemingly so insatiable? What is going on inside of us that is making us feel unsatisfied? What is the brain chemistry that makes us feel this way? Is our brain wired for endless insatiable consumption? What can we do about it? In this interview series, we are talking to credentialed experts such as psychologists, psychiatrists, therapists, brain science experts, as well as spiritual and religious leaders, and mind-body-spirit coaches, to address why so many of us are feeling unsatisfied & what we can do about it.

As a part of this series, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Lincoln Stoller.

Born in New York, Lincoln began the odyssey into mental health as a mountaineer and cultural ambassador in Asia, the Caribbean, and the Pacific Northwest. After working as a NASA astronomer, he earned a PhD in quantum physics and started an IT software and consulting company. Turning back to research into neurofeedback and hypnotherapy led to publications on shamanism, dream work, and learning through altered states of mind. Lincoln is now a Certified Clinical Counselor in British Columbia, serving clients worldwide through his website at mindstrengthbalance.com.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to know how you got from “there to here.” Inspire us with your backstory!

I grew up in a family of absent or absent-minded artists. The confusion of having an Eastern European heritage, living in a WASP suburb, and growing up in the melting pot of New York City left me wondering how the world worked, how I worked, and what made people tick. Everything I’ve done since then is part of my project to figure out what I am and who other people are.

What lessons would you share with yourself if you had the opportunity to meet your younger self?

Adults were then and are now just as crazy and lost as they appeared to be when I was a kid. Few had answers to the questions I was interested in, and those who might have had answers were not the people telling me what to do. That has not changed. Don’t trust people who come looking for you.

As a successful photographer, my father was the most pragmatic and technically minded of the bunch. I sensed a disconnect between the successful innovators around him and the uninspiring educators around me. This led me to break out of my orbit by starting to rock climb when I was 13 — something that no one in my community did in the 1970s. As a result, I began meeting unusual people in out-of-the-way places.

My efforts to find a better high school education failed for lack of guidance, but the one thing I did right — and which I encourage others to do — was to look for mentors. I found a few. That’s all you need. At the same time, avoid teachers like the plague.

None of us are able to experience success without support along the way. Is there a particular person for whom you are grateful because of the support they gave you to grow you from “there to here?” Can you share that story and why you are grateful for them?

I found no guidance in high school, unless you count negative role models, which are valuable if you recognize them before they mislead you. I had a drill sergeant gym teacher who was as bright as a brick. I started cutting gym class in order to train myself for bicycle racing and he actually approved. His was the first encouragement I got.

I graduated from high school a year early because I hated it so. While waiting for my Massachusetts college semester to start, I drove to Princeton, New Jersey, looking for someone to talk to about physics, of which I knew nothing. Because class was not in session, I was able to spend two days with Eugene Wigner. Wigner worked with Albert Einstein to author the 1939 letter sent to Roosevelt which started the nuclear age. He also invented quantum chemistry.

Wigner encouraged me like a grandfather. This galvanized my interest in science and further alienated me from everyone who was telling me what I needed to learn.

Near the end of college, still looking for opportunity, I found myself in the office of Charles Townes, the inventor of the laser. Townes gave me a job in astronomy and told me return in a month with my results. That was all the motivation I needed, and he knew it. Since then there have been others — never as teachers, always as colleagues. Some of these people I know almost nothing about, they just let me work alongside them.

Forty years later, I decided to find these mentors and ask them about their lives. That led to my first book, The Learning Project, Rites of Passage. You can get a free digital copy here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/xoqt1aomn1xdscx/The%20Learning%20Project%20Rites%20of%20Passage.epub?dl=0

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think it might help people?

What’s exciting to me rarely excites others, and vice versa. I like complex challenges where others look for simple pleasures. These days, I’m speaking out about the inadequacy of psychedelic-assisted therapy.

I’m against psychology’s appropriation of psychedelics. Most therapists are like school teachers, whose purpose is not to resolve problems, but to teach old ways of thinking. Psychologists playing with psychedelics is like children toying with a loaded gun.

However, criticizing does not provide direction, so I’m working on a series of books for people who want to understand how to use trance states therapeutically. The first of these books, Instant Enlightenment: Awakening States of Mind, will be available next year.

Most researchers who are interested in understanding the mind argue about where it’s located and the nature of the biology that supports it. I think this is irrelevant. Instead, I’m building a model of how we think that’s both therapeutic and computational. I’m interested in the relationships between thoughts, memories, and actions as they draw on issues of consciousness, randomness, and learning.

Our minds operate with fragments of thought that attract or repel us. Our personalities, of which each person has many, are composed of clumps of good and bad dreams. The dual illusions under which we operate — that of time being linear and each of us being isolated individuals — feed us a stream of perplexing experiences. Time is not linear and we are not isolated, these are just useful approximations.

I work with clients to help them put the fragments of thoughts that make them who they are, into more useful order. Your subconscious presents itself as chaotic dreams, and learning your way around in these dreams is the key to feeling free and satisfied.

We spend a third of our lives dreaming, and a good part of our waking consciousness in altered states. We rarely remember these states, are barely aware of our transitions between them, and largely overlook the guidance this information provides. If we’re going to gain clarity and consensus as individuals and as a culture, that needs to change: we need to better understand our minds.

Ok, now let’s talk about feeling “unsatisfied”. In the Western world, humans typically have their shelter, food, and survival needs met. What has led to us feeling we aren’t enough and don’t have enough? What is the wiring? Or in other words, how has nature and nurture played into how humans (in an otherwise “safe and secure” environment) experience feeling less than, or a need to have more than what is needed for basic survival?

I don’t feel my basic survival needs are met, and I don’t think others feel that way either, or that they should. As long as you operate from a sense of scarcity, you’re not secure. We are prevented from feeling safe by the sense that our growth and change would threaten our security.

Populist movements, like that fuelled by Donald Trump, are based on people’s insecurity. Those of a conventional mindset are deluded in thinking everything is fine and that those who disagree are misinformed or antisocial. It’s a confusion between what people think and what they feel: people may say they’re safe because they can’t argue otherwise, but they may not feel safe.

A reflection of this appears in the new Netflix series The Sandman, written by Neil Gaiman, David Goyer, and Allan Heinberg. This series anthropomorphizes social dysfunction using three kinds of characters: humans, who are pawns to emotions; supernatural minions, who represent conflicting urges; and warring deities, such as the deities Desire and Despair, who are working to damage our minds. This is Western emotional dysfunction in a nutshell.

How are societies different? For example, capitalistic societies trade differently than communists. Developed nations trade differently than developing nations. In your opinion, how does society shape a human’s experience and feelings of satisfaction?

Across all the cultures in which I’ve lived — which includes a sampling of the world’s races, political, and religious structures — people are the same. Their most significant differences are not cultural, they’re institutional. Institutions codify collective behavior and create less intelligent forms of behavior. Institutions are not inherently stupid — they can foster creative thinking in their members and support their creativity — but they think poorly. Regardless of their structure, institutions are generally reactive, not proactive.

Human beings have brains that operate on many levels, of which consciousness is one of the less complex. Consciousness is designed largely to make decisions over short to medium lengths of time. It’s in these time frames that we’ve learned to think of time as linear and individuals as separate. Over these short periods, we see with tunnel vision and act reflexively. Over long periods, we submit to feelings and tend to lose control.

Charlie Townes invented the laser by combining his far-sightedness with a great deal of uncertain information, unsuccessful explanations, and unresolved problems. The institutions and the institutionally-minded people, within whose scope he practiced, obstructed his vision on the basis of their simple faith in flawed, unexamined strategies. He was more intelligent than the institutions for whom he worked, but once his insight was shown to be productive, these same institutions were quick to support him. There is less support for that kind of creative thinking today.

Governments and corporations have simple structures. Much simpler, in fact, than the simplest prokaryotic cell. A deeply informed and thoughtful person would not be able to be a leader in today’s governments and corporations because they would become too involved in the ethical details, moral nuances, and future implications. This is why our government and corporate leaders tend to be intellectually enabled but emotionally impaired sociopaths.

These institutions and the people who lead them, subscribe to inhumane goals of perpetual growth, a corporate version of the Divine Right of Kings. These institutions do not serve individuals, the individuals serve the institutions, and they do so with their lives. We abhor the slavery of 150 years ago, yet we are slaves to our institutions. Most of us have lost the ability or desire to take care of ourselves.

With a specific focus on brain function, how has the brain and its dominion over the body and beliefs been impacted by the societal construct?

The brain has no dominion over the body; the brain and body are a single organism. It is institutional culture that encourages us to act without enough information to maintain our balance. This keeps us in a hyper-vigilant state, feeling that our personal and material assets are inadequate and our survival uncertain.

In that anxious state we become impulsive, shallow thinkers who are vulnerable to suggestions. Our brain only appears to be in control because we are in distress. This extends the amount of time we spend working in service of the institutional structures that promise us protection, while shortening our lifespan when we become less productive but more insightful, older people. Life in modern culture involves being in a constant state of minor trauma. One of the purposes of public education is to teach us to accept this as normal.

Do you think the way our society markets and advertises goods and services, has affected people’s feelings of satisfaction? Can you explain what you mean?

Western society operates in the service of the institutions that feed us and feed off us. This harnesses collective behavior and allows us to develop ideas that don’t provide immediate returns. It also discourages innovations that would threaten institutions which depend on us to buy their products.

Organic chemistry provided chemical weapons and nitrogen fertilizer. Computers have made possible a surveillance state while fostering productive communication. Genetics offers cures for disease along with the opportunity for new programs for eugenics. Profits create opportunity for someone, but not necessarily for us.

“Between 1938 and 1950, National City Lines (NCL) and its subsidiaries, American City Lines and Pacific City Lines — with investment from GM, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California (through a subsidiary), Federal Engineering, Phillips Petroleum, and Mack Trucks — gained control of additional transit systems in about 25 cities… Most of the companies involved were convicted in 1949 of conspiracy to monopolize interstate commerce in the sale of buses, fuel, and supplies to NCL subsidiaries.”
 — Wikipedia, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy

As a result of this “General Motors streetcar conspiracy,” the city of Los Angeles lost its public transport system and suffers congestion and pollution to this day. It is a mistake to believe the market economy works to improve the best products at market. Most efforts go into creating new opportunities for those who might profit from them.

Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death worldwide and a lucrative health care market. Heart rate variability (HRV) is a simple skill for improving cardiac function. Anyone can improve their HRV using a simple software program and an inexpensive heart-rate monitor.

Twenty years ago, inexpensive HRV training tools were available, but they are no longer. I don’t know how many people could have been helped, but I trained clients in this skill and their HRV scores quickly improved.

I suspect a significant percentage of people with cardiac dysfunction could extend their lives by 5 years if these tools still existed. Until there is some means of compensating practitioners for lower income in exchange for longer patient life, patient lives will remain shorter while the revenues of health care providers will remain higher.

“(Comparing) patients with cardiovascular disease with a high heart-rate variability, those with a low heart rate variability had a 121% and 46% increased risk of all-cause death and cardiovascular events, respectively, during a follow-up of at least 1 year.”
 — Fang, Wu, & Tsai (2019).

Heart rate variability seems to play a role in exceptional longevity.”
 — Hernández-Vincente et al. (2020).

Product development, like ecological evolution, feeds on opportunity. As long as more profits come from disease than health, it is the maintenance and service of ill health that will draw innovation.

Fang, S. -C., Wu, Y. -L., & Tsai, P. -S. (2020). Heart rate variability and risk of all-cause death and cardiovascular events in patients with cardiovascular disease: A meta-analysis of cohort studies. Biological Research for Nursing, 22(1), 45–56. DOI: 10.1177/1099800419877442

Hernández-Vicente A, Hernando D, Santos-Lozano A, Rodríguez-Romo G, Vicente-Rodríguez G, Pueyo E, Bailón R, Garatachea N. (2020 Sep 17). Heart rate variability and exceptional longevity, Frontiers in Physiology, 11: 566399. DOI: 10.3389/fphys.2020.566399.

How is the wiring of the brain, body, and beliefs shaped by marketing, language, and how humans trade?

Our actions are dictated by intentions, memory, experience, and need, and our learning is intellectual, emotional, and subconscious. No one system has full control over us, and we’re rarely directed by one system alone.

In our search for comfort, meaning, and purpose, we assess our options, make decisions, and remember consequences. We are not conscious of most of what we perceive and remember, which is to say, we are only aware of a small part of what we experience and learn.

When things are going well, what we’re consciously and subconsciously learning are synchronized. We learn to act, think, feel, and speak consistently. We understand what we’re doing.

When we’re under stress, different parts of us move in different directions toward different goals. We’ll learn one thing intellectually and something else emotionally. When our conscious, subconscious, and somatic systems are not in alliance we can develop mental and physical health problems. Anxiety is a warning. Dissatisfaction could be a sign of trouble.

I work in marketing so I’m very cognizant of this question. In your opinion, how do you think marketing professionals can be more responsible for how their advertising shapes humans’ health and experience of happiness overall?

It depends on who you work for. The goal of marketing is to steer people toward a decision by leveraging their inclinations. The laudable goal is to foster curiosity and independence in order to have new ideas and create opportunities. Unless you’re marketing diversity, fostering independence will shrink your target market.

To be a responsible marketer means working for a responsible goal or audience. If you consider marketing to be educational, then you can raise awareness by either providing more, better, or more easily understood information.

Given the stress many people are feeling over the quality of information and the intentions of those providing it, it should be easy to provide better information. But because the culture is polarized, opposite sides view each other with hostility, and the information-seeking population in the middle is suspicious. The purveyor of intelligent information is squeezed out. Mixing suspicion with manipulation creates a feedback process that grows increasingly unstable.

We see the quality of main stream media, such as offered by the New York Times, degrading to the point that much of it is of no value. Middle ground popularizers, like Joe Rogan, are being demonized for deviating from the official narrative.

Strident partisans, like Alex Jones, grew their audience by expressing listener’s fears and frustrations. Others following a more moderate path, like Jordan Peterson, are doing something similar. These popularizers don’t resolve opposition, they amplify it.

In polarized times, we’re forced to demonstrate our allegiance before a faction will accept us, and the factions are adversarial. Nearly half the US population think we’re heading for a civil war (Gail and West, 2021). You can offer reconciliation and collaboration, but most of the world is not in the mood for it.

Gale, W. G., & West, D. M. (2021 Sept 16). Is the US headed for another Civil War? The Brookings Institution. Retrieved from: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2021/09/16/is-the-us-headed-for-another-civil-war/

For you personally, if you have all your basic needs met, do you feel you have enough in life?

I want more people in my camp to provide more dialog and thought, as well as more social and financial support for me. My experience in physics taught me science is less about merit and more about a vested interests. My experience in software taught me the importance of sales. This, in turn, guides technology.

The field of psychology is unscientific, low-brow, and undiscerning. Institutions and practitioners follow fads sold by savvy publishers, advertisers, and marketing agents. This trend gained strength with the rise of managed care and the popularity of pharmaceutical solutions, and it’s happening again in the area of psychedelic-assisted therapy.

Many of the best ideas languish for lack of institutional backing. I ask our readers to raise their standards, encourage others to do the same, and focus on getting us out of this growing state of ignorance and conflict.

Okay, fantastic. Here is the main question of our interview: Can you share with our readers your “5 things we can each do to address the feeling of not having enough.” Please share a story or example for each.

I don’t think you can make “feeling satisfied” a goal, any more than you can aim to make money grow on trees. Here are seven ways to gain balance and integration, and the more of these you gain, the more satisfied you’ll feel.

1 — Emotion

Emotions summarize knowledge. If you don’t like what you feel, it’s because you’re not happy with what you know. Emotions guide you by telling you what to feel, not what to do. They are not reasons to act, they are a reflection of you.

Honor yourself. The next time someone disappoints or betrays you, recognize it’s their problem. Own the part you play, but don’t let anyone devalue you.

2 — Awareness

Your conscious mind is a combination of guesswork and awareness. Guesswork is uncertain and awareness is not fixed. Pay wider attention and you’ll be more effective.

The next time you’re trying to control a situation to make things go your way, stop controlling and watch what happens. See which way the wind is blowing without trying to change the weather. And if the weather is against you, find better weather.

3 — Ideas

It’s not your good ideas that are important, it’s what others feel. What you think might be right, but most people act on feelings.

It’s a rare person who can translate what you think into what they feel, and with those people you can build a personal relationship. For everyone else, speak to their emotions, and don’t expect them to understand.

4 — Balance

While you feel yourself to be one person, you are not. We can see imbalance in the personalities of others, but rarely in ourselves. As has been said, a sure sign of insanity is the belief that you’re entirely sane, because to be sane is to recognize your many conflicting parts.

In almost every case, we don’t see people for who they are, but for who we are. We can only see in others what we see in ourselves, and only maintain balance with others to the extent that we are balanced in ourselves. Few of us are aware of how disintegrated we are.

5 — Ignorance

Give yourself space to not know, to act without permission, without preconception, and with the chance of failure. You can’t learn from the mistakes of others, you can only avoid their situations. Avoidance is not understanding.

There is no such thing as teaching, there is only learning. Learning requires making mistakes and exploring situations as you experience of them.

6 — Time

Serial thinking deceives us into thinking time is linear. But time doesn’t exist, only events exist. Events are related through networks, and networks cross time and space in many directions.

As long as you’re living in linear time, you’re fighting a reality you can’t control. Understand yourself as existing at the intersection of many events. Let them take place around you.

7 — Love

You won’t find your tribe, so try to create it, but be aware that your family is the tribe you were born into. We rarely talk about love because we wouldn’t know what we’re talking about, but it’s worth trying to explain, because if you can’t imagine it, you can’t create it.

Improve yourself in these seven areas, and you’ll feel greater satisfaction.

I have recorded this as a YouTube video here: 7 points to satisfaction+

Do you have any favorite books, podcasts, or resources that have inspired you to live with more joy in life?

I find inspiration in how others lived, but not in their particular products. I study the lives of Da Vinci, Calder, Feynman, Einstein, Wright, and others, as much for their regrets as their successes. I’m impressed and mystified by their work, but not inspired because their lives were so different and their accomplishments so extreme. I cannot match these people’s skills, but I might do better in the areas where they were weak.

Da Vinci struggled with a romantic partner who never sustained him. Feynman curried superficial professional relationships and regretted his mortality. Wright was supercilious and emotionally insecure; Einstein: sad and lonely. I can find no flaws in Calder because he said almost nothing, but he was not physically fit. These people put everything into their work, and I aspire to do the same while avoiding their failures.

I reflect on those who mentored me. I try to emulate their strengths and avoid what they considered their weaknesses. In spite of my familiarity with my role models, the characters who advise and support me in my dreams continue to appear as strangers.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂

Hold a high standard of integrity. Accept failure as necessary for learning. Don’t deride those who don’t share your standards, but don’t work with them either. Make your life your work, not the other way around.

On the other hand, achievements don’t raise one’s worth. We all face unique challenges with different resources. Surround yourself with those who appreciate and support you, and do the same for them.

What is the best way for our readers to continue to follow your work online?

I work with clients to support superior health and performance. Subscribe through my website at mindstrengthbalance.com for posts and podcasts. Write to me.

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent on this. We wish you only continued success.

About The Interviewer: For 30 years, Drew Gerber has been inspiring those who want to change the world. Drew is the CEO of Wasabi Publicity, Inc., a full-service PR agency lauded by PR Week and Good Morning America. Wasabi Publicity, Inc. is a global marketing company that supports industry leaders, change agents, unconventional thinkers, companies and organizations that strive to make a difference. Whether it’s branding, traditional PR or social media marketing, every campaign is instilled with passion, creativity and brilliance to powerfully tell their clients’ story and amplify their intentions in the world. Schedule a free consultation at WasabiPublicity.com/Choosing-Publicity


I Can’t Get No Satisfaction: Lincoln Stoller Of Mind Strength Balance On Why So Many Of Us Are… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.