Social Groups rather than Facts Shape our Opinions

Our attitudes are shaped much more by our social groups than they are by facts on the ground. We are not great reasoners. Most people don't like to think at all, or like to think as little as possible. And by most, I mean roughly 70 percent of the population. Even the rest seem to devote a lot of their resources to justifying beliefs that they want to hold, as opposed to forming credible beliefs based only on fact. 

Think about if you were to utter a fact that contradicted the opinions of the majority of those in your social group. You pay a price for that. 

I live in a very limited universe, and so I have to depend on the beliefs and knowledge of other people. I know what I’ve read; I know what I’ve heard from experts. In that sense, the decisions we make, the attitudes we form, the judgments we make, depend very much on what other people are thinking. 

Steven Sloman quoted in Vox

This Chapter of Your Life

If the present chapter of your life is a course you are taking, what would an appropriate title for it be? What are you meant to be learning in it? What is it that you need to unlearn for this course? What is it time for you to let go of? What unlived life is now there in the shadows?

William Bridges, The Way of Transition

We’re All Lousy Self-Evaluators

A stranger walks into a room and sits down behind a table. He picks up a piece of paper and read aloud a generic-sounding weather report. He completes his “report” in about 90 seconds and walks out of the room.

Next, you’re asked to guess his IQ.

You’re part of a psychological experiment, and you object to the absurdity of the request. I don’t know anything about that guy. He just came into a room and read a report. It wasn’t even his report- you gave it to him to read! How am I supposed to know his IQ?

Reluctantly, you make a wild guess. Separately, Fake Weatherman is asked to guess his own IQ. Who made a better guess?

Amazingly, you did, even though you know nothing about Fake Weatherman. Two (German) psychologists … conducted this experiment, and they found that the strangers’ IQ predictions were better than the predictions of those whose IQ was being predicted- about 66 percent more accurate.

To be clear, it’s not so much that you’re a brilliant predictor; it’s that he’s a lousy self-evaluator. We’re all lousy self-evaluators. College students do a superior job predicting the longevity of their roommates’ romantic relationships than their own.

Savor, for a moment, the preposterousness of these findings. Fake Weatherman has all the information, and you’ve got none. He’s got decades of data- year’s worth of grades, college entrance exams cores, job evaluations, and more. Fake Weatherman should be the worlds foremost expert on Fake Weatherman!

Chip & Dan Heath, Switch

Using Projects to Avoid Making Changes

If you are having trouble getting motivated to finish a project, consider the possibility that finishing that report (or whatever your project involves) means facing a void. The project is a distraction so that you don't have to see the emptiness outside of it. You slow down the completion until another project emerges to play the role of another distraction. You’re putting off looking at uncomfortable truths about yourself 

While in the midst of a deadline-driven project, you feel like you have a clear identity because your purpose is defined by the project's needs. But if the projects was removed from your life, would you have justification for thinking of yourself as someone of value? Is your worth  bound in the projects?

So it is with serious relationships, where someone provides a sense of purpose, giving definition and a sense of worth.

If you were forced to sit down and write out the definition of who you are without the benefit of a title (manager, employee, project manager) or relationship (wife, girlfriend, mother) would you lack the means to define yourself?

A suggestion: Spend time doing things that allow you to center yourself. Give yourself downtime to listen. Whatever brings you to stillness will put you in a good position to allow the transition to take hold and internalize it so you don’t miss the opportunity to make a paradigm shift toward greater emotional and spiritual health. Allow yourself to just "be" and reconnect with the world around you (its sounds, smells, tastes, touches, and sights).

Stephen Goforth

Admitting You are Wrong

Cognitive dissonance is what we feel when the self-concept — I’m smart, I’m kind, I’m convinced this belief is true — is threatened by evidence that we did something that wasn’t smart, that we did something that hurt another person, that the belief isn’t true. To reduce dissonance, we have to modify the self-concept or accept the evidence. Guess which route people prefer?

We cling to old ways of doing things, even when new ways are better and healthier and smarter. We cling to self-defeating beliefs long past their shelf life. And we make our partners, co-workers, parents and kids really, really mad at us.

 Carol Tavris quotes in the New York Times and co-author of the book Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me)

Managing Yourself

If you understand how you think and work, you have more control over who you will become. Abilities can improve as you understand how your mind works.

Creative and critically thinking people open a conversation with themselves that allows them to understand, control, and improve their own minds and work.

Ken Bain, What the Best College Students Do

My world felt Small

You are an extension of your environment. I realized after my teen years that I was usually happier and more productive with a clean room. I was usually more energetic when I was outside or with my friends. My world would feel small when I spent the day only looking at my phone.

Jace in Seattle

Observed Behavior is Changed Behavior

When the lead singer at the concert asks you to scream as loud as you can, and then he asks again, going, “I can’t hear you! You can do better than that!” have you ever noticed that the second time is always louder?  Why wasn’t everyone yelling at the top of their lungs the first time?  Some really cool scientists actually tested this in 1979. (They) had people shout as loud as they could in a group and then alone, or vice-versa. Sure enough, the overall loudness of a small group of people was less than any one of them by themselves. You can even chart it on a graph. The more people you add, the less effort any one person does.

If you know you aren’t being judged as an individual, your instinct is to fade into the background. To prove this, psychologist Alan Ingram ruined tug-of-war forever. In 1974, he had people put on a blindfold and grab a rope. The rope was attached to a rather medieval-looking contraption that simulated the resistance of an opposing team. The subjects were told many other people were also holding the rope on their side, and he measured their efforts. Then, he told them they would be pulling alone, and again he measured. There were alone both times, but when they thought they were in a group, they pulled 18 percent less strenuously on average.

This behavior is more likely to show up when the task a hand is simple. With complex tasks, it is usually easy to tell who isn’t pulling their weight. Once you know your laziness can be seen, you try harder. You do this because of another behavior called evaluation apprehension, which is just a fancy way of saying you care more when you know you are being singled out. Your anxiety levels decrease when you know your effort will be pooled with others’. You relax. You coast. 

David McRaney, You are Not so Smart

The Value of Awe

By becoming less attuned to ourselves and more attuned to the rest of the world, awe helps us re-contextualize ourselves. It helps make you feel like there’s more going on in the world than just you. And it gives you that sense of being a part of something much bigger than yourself.   

Paul Piff quoted in the Washington Post

Why are some people are incompetent

Incompetent people lack the skills to improve because they are unable to distinguish between incompetence and competence. Incompetent people overestimate their own competence and, failing to sense of mismatch between their performance and what is desirable, see no need to try to improve. Incompetent people can be taught to raise their competence by learning the skills to judge their own performance more accurately.

To become more competent, or even expert, we must learn to recognize competence when we see it in others, become more accurate judges of what we ourselves know and don't know, adopt learning strategies that get results, and find objective ways to track our progress.

Peter C. Brown and Henry L. Roediger III, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

Is it Hard for You to Ask for Help?

If you are inclined to avoid requesting help, it’s important to examine any thoughts or beliefs that might be getting in your way. These could include: 

·      Negative associations: you might think that someone is lazy if they can’t do something themselves.

·      Self-criticism: you could think that asking for help means you are incapable or weak.

·      Concerns about how you will be perceived: you might worry that someone will think less favourably of you if you ask for help.

·      Self-sacrificing beliefs: you might worry about burdening someone with your needs.

·      Overestimating the likelihood of rejection: ‘No one is going to want to help me out,’ you might assume – ‘why would they?’

Research suggests that we tend to underestimate the likelihood of someone saying yes to a request for help. Most people feel good when they do helpful things for others, and prefer to think of themselves as generous and willing to help when they can. If you fear that someone will like you less if you ask them for help, consider the opposite possibility: people might actually like you more if they’ve done you a favour. Expressing vulnerability and openness, by acknowledging that you could use help, can lead to deeper connection.

Debbie Sorensen writing in Psyche

Is Learning a Struggle?

Embrace the fact that significant learning is often, or even usually, somewhat difficult. You will experience setbacks. These are signs of effort, not of failure. Effortful learning changes your brain, making new connection, building mental models, increasing your capacity. The implication of this is powerful: your intellectual abilities lie to a large degree within your own control. Knowing that this is so makes the difficulties worth tackling. 

Peter C. Brown and Henry L. Roediger III, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

Finding Sorrow

When you get depressed, it’s comforting to remember that deep inside you is a well of pain. This pain can help you. It’s a reservoir of self-knowledge and nourishment. When you’re able to welcome this pain, it can carry you out of depression into sorrow.

When depressed, you are merely numb and listless. But in sorrow, you feel the fine-grained texture of loss. Whereas depression diminishes our world, sorrow teaches you the true value of the things you mourn. Sorrow is the other side of joy—a dark, moist cradle of grief that slowly nourishes you, a solemn vigil that honors what you love. So the next time you are ensnared in darkness, cut through the gray armor of depression straight to the dark heart of sorrow.

Lost in depression, I am found in sorrow.

Andrew Boyd, Daily Afflictions

Stripping Away

As we grow older in the West, we generally think we should have a lot to show for our lives—a lot of trophies. According to numerous Eastern philosophies, this is backwards. As we age, we shouldn’t accumulate more to represent ourselves, but rather strip things away to find our true selves—and thus, to find happiness and peace. 

Arthur C. Brooks, From Strength to Strength

Be your imperfectly perfect self

In this crazy world that’s trying to make you like everyone else, find the courage to keep being your awesome self. And when they laugh at you for being different, laugh back at them for being the same. Spend more time with those who make you smile and less time with those who you feel pressured to impress. 

Marc & Angel Chernoff

Wallowing in Guilt

No one heaps guilt on themselves when they don't have to do so. Right? Actually, there is much to gain from wallowing in false guilt.

* You gain control over others. You are telling others to orient themselves around your need for 'restoration.'

* Removes responsibility from your shoulders. They can’t expect much from you when you are broken and bleeding, can they?

* You get attention. "Look at me! Don't pay attention to others. Focus on me! See how guilty I am?"

* Get others to pump you up. "I'm so bad." "Oh no, you're a wonderful person.."

* You do for yourself what you wish others would do to you. "I wish other people would punish me because I don't feel worthy of good things happening to me."

* You avoid resentment. It’s easier to admit guilt rather than resentment. What you’d like to do to someone else (punish them) you do to yourself.

* You may have an inadequate view of God. To hang on to your guilt, you distort the truth of forgiveness.

* You may have false guilt because of expectations. You could be trying to live up to everyone’s expectations-and, of course, you can’t. Or you might be trying to live up to a peer group’s expectations.

* You may have a fear of repeating a wrong or the fear of being tempted toward it.

* You may be following some unhealthy teaching. You may have been taught to feel bad over wrongs you’ve committed—forever.

* Your family has been inconsistent in forgiving you and only showed you conditional love.

* You are trying to fulfill unhelpful injunctions you heard from people in childhood. Others may have tried to motivate you by guilt by getting you to focus on the negative aspects of yourself.

* You could be covering up feelings of anger with feelings of guilt. Perhaps you are not making a distinction between guilt and disappointment.

* And finally, you may have done something wrong and are experiencing true guilt but want to avoid dealing with it.

Stephen Goforth

Taking Pride in Doing Evil

She was very much ashamed of being in jail—but of being a prostitute, not at all. On the contrary, she seemed rather pleased with herself and proud of her position. Yet, how could it be otherwise?

No man can play an active part in the world unless he believes that his activity is important and good. Therefore, whatever position a man may hold, he is certain to take that view of human life in general which will make his own activity seem important and good.

It is generally supposed that a thief, a murderer, a spy or a prostitute, knowing their occupation to be evil, must be ashamed of it. In point of fact, the case is precisely the reverse. Men who have been placed by fate and their own mistakes (or sins) in a certain position, however false, always adopt a view of life which makes their place in it good an appropriate.

To maintain this idea, men instinctively mix only with those who accept their view of life and of their place in it. This surprises us when thieves boast of their adroitness, prostitutes flaunt their shame, murderers gloat over their cruelty.

We are surprised, however, only because the circle, the sphere, of these men is limited, and principally because we are outside it; but does not the same state of things exist among the rich – who boast of their wealth, i.e., of robbery; the generals—who boast of their victories, i.e., of murder; the rulers—who boast of their power, i.e., of violence?

We do not recognize their ideas of life and of good and evil as perverted, only because the circle of men holding these perverted ideas is wider and because we belong to it ourselves.

Leo Tolstoy, Resurrection

Four kinds of self-stories

Ontology is the study of being. Therefore, an ontology of the self is a person's account of how he or she came to be. Hankiss finds that young adults 10 to use four different kinds of “strategies” in constructing their ontologies of self: the dynastic (a good past gives birth to a good present), the antithetical (a bad past gives birth to a good present),the compensatory ( a good past gives birth to a bad present), and the self-absolutory (a bad past gives birth to a bad present).

Dan McAdams, The Stories We Live By

They Probably Aren’t

Studies show that we consistently overestimate how much people think about us and our failings, leading us to undue inhibition and worse quality of life. Perhaps your followers or neighbors would have a lower opinion of you if they were thinking about you—but they probably aren’t. Next time you feel self-conscious, notice that you are thinking about yourself. You can safely assume that everyone around you is doing more or less the same.  

Arthur C. Brooks writing in The Atlantic

I don’t know who I am anymore

In order to know who I am, I must also know who I am not. The point of departure in personal myth-making is the dawning realization that I am not what I was. I am not a child anymore. The adolescent takes leave of the frameworks and certainties of the past and searches for new answers to new questions in life. Certain authority figures are made into negative identities. At the time they are created, they personify what an individual doesn't want to become.  They are the first villains and fools in the adolescent's new story. While there are villains, there are also kings and queens.

In world mythologies, the young hero frequently receives critical help from Weis benefactors— sages, goddesses, and supernatural aides.  Without their help, the hero's journey is probably doomed. We should not be misled, therefore, into thinking that mythmaking is a solitary quest. There are indeed dangerous to face, and risks that we all must take, and take alone. But the adolescent’s search for identity is initiated and played out in a social context. We come to know who we are through relationships and in social settings. To depart from the past is not to Leave the world behind. It is rather to move from one world to another. 

Dan McAdams, The Stories We Live By