Not every nexus state has arrows pointing to all other states. You may not have any “perfect” nexus state that can go anywhere. You might, for instance, have a nexus state whose arrows point to all your work activities but not your social activities, and/or a nexus state whose arrows point to all your social activities but not your work activities. Some states, then, are disconnected even from your best nexus states.
In that case, if you want self-control in transitioning from work activities to social activities (or vice-versa) you’ll need to build an arrow from each to the other. To achieve this, you can write down a narrative about the inaccessible state that taps into the features of your accessible nexus state. For example, if you want to spend time with a loved one, you could write about valuing love. Values are essentially a shorthand description of your nexus states’ key features.
Knowing your values is the key to reaching disconnected states. You can start by doing a “value sort” where you choose your most important values from a list. Here is a value sort available online, where you choose from one hundred values:
https://www.guilford.com/add/miller11_old/pers_val.pdf?t=1
You can also do the reverse operation: start with the disconnected state you want to reach and try to think of any values you have that would connect to it.
Some values and narratives can be used to reach generic states, and refer to one’s approach to difficult tasks. Other values and narratives are used to reach specific types of states.
Here are some examples of using values and narratives to reach generic states:
- When trying to achieve something, imagine that you are not alone in your pursuit of this achievement. Think of all the other people who are doing this. This taps into a cooperation or belonging value.
- Imagine that you are going to challenge yourself to succeed at this task. This taps into an achievement value.
- Tell yourself that you deserve to succeed. This activates a fairness or justice value.
- Remind yourself that “future me will thank me” for doing this. This activates a care value – i.e. care for your future self.
- Tell yourself that “I am just practicing; it’s okay if I don’t do this perfectly.” This taps into a learning value.
On the other hand, specific tasks could require specific narratives.
- If you want to start cooking, you could activate a care value by reminding yourself that your family will appreciate this food. You could also activate a learning value by noting that you are improving as a cook.
- If you need to do a math problem set, you could activate a rationality value by thinking about the enjoyment of solving puzzles, or a learning value by imagining how you’ll improve at math by doing this problem set.
Sometimes, a personal block comes from being unable to make sense of the goal state in terms of your values. For example, if you want to think about the enjoyment of solving puzzles – but you don’t actually enjoy these particular puzzles (because they are too easy, too hard, boring, etc.) – then activating this rationality value might not work. Hunter gatherers like to have autonomy and like to make sense of their world.
Similarly, if you want to cook in order to make your family happy, but your family regularly avoids eating your food and orders fast food instead, you might have difficulty getting yourself to make sense of cooking in this way. Different people make sense of things differently – for some people, your family would have to explicitly thank you and say nice things about your cooking in order for you to believe that your cooking matters. For other people, it’s enough that they eat the food. For others, you’d really like them to ask for second portions of the food. Communication about these concerns is helpful in order to find meaning.
Your values are yours: no one can tell you what they should be. If you use the values you “ought to” have in order to connect to a disconnected state, it’s less like to work than if you use the values that you do actually have.
Nexus State Theory 