Up: [[Life Writing]] Related: [[Blue Box]] Created: 2023-06-29 Updated: 2025-01-17 ### The Experiment [[Marion Milner]] engaged in a seven-year self-study to try to figure out what made her happy. The results are published in her book, *A Life of One’s Own*. Milner’s process was to record moments of happiness in her day and then go back and analyze them to see if she could determine any rules. She learned fairly early on that this couldn’t be a scientific self-study. She frequently found that what she called ‘blind thoughts’ would take her off in another direction without her awareness. This is quite different from having an intention and trying out various methods of achieving it. ### Her Conclusion In going back through seven years of material, Milner found that understanding wasn’t linear so organizing her life chronologically wouldn’t work. Rather, meaning would often dawn on her years after an experience, and she’d often have to go through similar experiences over and over before any meaning would emerge. She concluded that understanding is an ascending [[Spiral]], not a straight line. ### Her Discoveries #### Process Marion found that simply paying [[attention]] made a huge difference. She repeatedly stated that *the act of looking changes the significance of what is found.* In that same vein, she wrote, *…every attempt to formulate desires, however incoherent, is a step forward.* (p. 36) She started using [[Freewriting]] when making important decisions so that she bypassed her deliberate opinions in favour of thoughts from her ‘automatic self’. Marion kept an [[Opposites]] diary for considering the opposite of a strongly held belief. #### Results Marion found that she could sometimes change her mood, particularly from melancholy to happy or contented, by saying in words what she was seeing. For example, “I see Mom sitting in my brown chair reading the news on her iPad, and I hear Toffee grumping when a car door closes.” Constantly trying to improve is just another way of [[Being Better Than You Are]]. The answer is to stand back, wait, not push. In other words, [[Surrender]]. It often wasn’t easy for Milner to know her own mind. *It was far easier to want what other people want and then imagine that the choice was one’s own.* (p. 69) Whatever Marion thought she was worrying about was never the real problem. And using tasks to distract herself didn’t work because the emotions were still there. Milner struggled with the self-attacks that often plague me. After a long time she *came to the conclusion that the nagging thought was always one that was concerned with some unsatisfied emotional need, a need which for some reason I was refusing to recognize and which could not therefore obtain direct expression.* (p. 142)