This Is Your Day

Perhaps the way we start out the day, even a tiny decision or practice, could change the course of one’s life. Nonlinear science—chaos theory to be specific—identifies the butterfly effect, which has become a popular if misunderstood buzzword. The concept originated with MIT meteorology professor Edward Lorenz, who serendipitously discovered the phenomenon while running some weather simulations. He noted that in theory, the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in one part of the world could cause a typhoon somewhere far distant.

Little decisions we make can reverberate profoundly. Movies and books are full of this kind of story, but we often get locked into predictable patterns in our everyday lives. Jump to the last paragraph if you don't want to go through the fun mathy stuff.

A Hint of Math

The scientific name for the butterfly effect is “sensitive dependence on initial conditions”. Lorenz was running computer simulations to work on weather predictions, using the same modelling equation and, he thought, essentially the same starting points. The first time he ran the simulation, he used 0.506127. The second time he rounded it off to 0.506, assuming it wouldn’t matter.

He expected the simulations to match, but many hours later, when he checked the results, they were totally different. At first he didn't see why. Looking back, he saw that the initial values entered were ever so slightly different, by a tiny fraction. Tiny events—the movement of a butterfly's wings—could create dramatic effects.

The graph below shows this kind of simulation. We can see that very quickly, the red and blue lines, which at first track together, diverge. Like identical twins, they start very close to the same point but may end up very different.

Logistic map example of butterfly effect

Source: Yapparina, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Surrendering Control–The Power of Chaotic Determinism

In real-world terms, this means that complex systems—unfortunately including the weather—are hard to predict, let alone control. Tiny differences magnify with repetition to lead to big deviations. This can happen really fast. Not knowing what is going to happen, specifically—while also knowing what the possibilities typically are—is the rule rather than the exception.

This is sensitive dependence on initial conditions, aka the butterfly effect. It doesn’t really mean a butterfly’s wings could cause a typhoon—there are too many other factors—but if you could change only the flapping, it would change the future. Sensitive dependence on initial conditions is characteristic of systems that are “chaotically deterministic”. It's a very cool phenomenon, with vast implications.

Many natural systems work this way, including those related to the brain and behavior. It is a model in between full determinism and full randomness, having ramifications, for example, for free will and choice. In chaotic determinism, we can’t fully know what will happen, even if we know everything about the system—omniscience is impossible. On the other hand, it’s not totally random: What happens matters, but it matters in the way a thunderclap during a mountain storm might or might not cause an avalanche. There are recurring patterns that come up time and again, but they never exactly repeat.

Give Us This Day Our Daily Butterfly

I’ve worked a lot on how people can change when the usual ways of changing don't change anything. Sometimes, sadly, nothing works, even when we try everything. There are so many permutations: when people can change and when it is a struggle, when it takes longer than anyone wants or imagines, what works and what doesn’t work for whom, how to set the stage for change, all kinds of related questions that arise all the time.

One little trick I’ve come up with over the years that often helps dramatically over time is to start the day a bit differently, in a certain way. This shift tends to be useful for people who use a command-control view of reality, who try to make things happen in a very linear fashion but have difficulty with the less clear ways reality and the mind can work, as if things can only happen in lockstep, evidence to the contrary. If I do A, then B will happen. If I work out, I’ll get into shape. If I sleep more, I’ll be better-rested, less irritable, happier, and more effective. While this can be very effective, the very same mindset can obstruct change and dampen creativity, originality and playfulness.

OK, so what is the "trick"? It's simple: When you wake up, before you do anything else, the first thing you do: Pause and reflect, and say or think something like, “This is my day. This is a day in my life. Whatever happens today, it is my day.” You can play around with this, make it your own, but the basic concept is to leverage the butterfly effect with the smallest lift possible, lazy self-help.

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We’re not talking about meditation for 30 minutes in the morning, or even 10 minutes. This can take less than a minute, setting the tone for the whole day, a day in your life.

Simple as it is, it’s a reminder of something elemental. It’s also a top-down intervention, one that potentially shapes how experiences are interpreted throughout the course of the day. It’s helpful to do this as a regular practice, but it doesn’t really need to be done like clockwork. You can miss days in a row, or forget about it for months. Whenever it comes up is fine.

How does this work, when it does? For one thing, it’s an act of self-compassion. It’s an act of self-determination and kindness, as well as of authority and ownership. It fosters a sense of agency, harnessing one's internal locus of control (versus external locus of control, whereby people believe factors outside of themselves govern what happens). Internal locus of control is associated with less depression and greater resilience.

Starting the day like this may be constructively disruptive, shaking off the status quo, introducing an often unfamiliar idea at a time of day when people typically jump into autopilot to get ready for work, as if their day belonged to someone else.

It’s a small lift. It takes the tiniest amount of effort, a kind of micro-commitment it's super easy to succeed at. With low expectations for any particular outcome, the pressure is off. Finally, it’s a persistent nudge over time, like the proverbial tugboat moving a giant oil tanker. You can't see much happening at all, but over time the difference becomes more evident.