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"I'm thinking X. Am I thinking this because Y or Z? What's the meaning of thought anyway?" In the thought example about the "Milk" in the article I found mysel

• ahoyhere 17y ago
  Haven't you ever come out of a situation and, at the end, when it was all said and done, realized that you had talked/fooled yourself into it? Self-congratulatory tones can be indicators of something that is very bad. It's important to not get high on your own supply. A lot of what we tell ourselves is wrong, or at least misguided. If you question your own intentions and observations, you can avoid making big mistakes. For example, I know lots of people who tell themselves "I didn't get what I want because x." where x is something that is obviously completely beyond their control, and therefore not their problem/responsibility. But if you want to protect your ego, telling yourself that it's because of x-ism is totally effective. It also cripples you. Which is why you have to ask yourself, "What's my motive here?" and "What do I have to lose if I think about it from a different perspective?" Also, considering most of the people who have promoted self-examination and self-understanding over the years have been men, your bit about women is somewhat disingenuous.
  • kirse 17y ago
    -- Haven't you ever come out of a situation and, at the end, when it was all said and done, realized that you had talked/fooled yourself into it? No. Before I ever enter a situation I already know whether or not I need to convince myself. I'm pretty aware of my own intuition, and the more I need to "talk myself" into doing something the more I'll question myself before I skip over my gut instinct. It's been extremely rare when I've come out of a situation where I trusted my intuition and been unhappy with the result. On the other hand, I've had many times where I overrode my intuition and thought "damn, should have trusted myself" -- It's important to not get high on your own supply. I don't. It's called being proactive and is functionally similar to the techniques of mindfulness. Steven Covey writes about it in his first chapter of "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People". And please, entrepreneurs ignore reality more than most people I've ever known. Start up a business against all odds... convincing yourself to keep going with an idea even though you haven't succeeded after years? How is that NOT being high on your own supply? -- If you question your own intentions and observations, you can avoid making big mistakes. This is the big fallacy of questioning your every thought and intention. If only I could just monitor every thought, every motive, question my every step, then I could do it perfectly -- I would avoid the big mistakes. Wrong. You might have perfectly reasoned every thought, justified every intention, and still fail simply because you didn't have all the information. So with that in mind, that's why it's much better to simply DO. Ensure one's intuition is in agreement and then DO, don't think into it. Mistakes are going to happen anyway, and that's when you'll do the reflecting.
    • CodeMage 17y ago
      -- If you question your own intentions and observations, you can avoid making big mistakes. This is the big fallacy of questioning your every thought and intention. If only I could just monitor every thought, every motive, question my every step, then I could do it perfectly -- I would avoid the big mistakes. Wrong. You might have perfectly reasoned every thought, justified every intention, and still fail simply because you didn't have all the information. I like to compare this to Gödel's first incompleteness theorem. No matter how much we examine our thoughts, we're still applying the same brain to them. You might hope to catch some of the problems by applying second, third and fourth thoughts to your first thoughts, but there's bound to be a flaw you can't work around, "an arithmetical statement that is true, but not provable in theory" ;)
      • ahoyhere 17y ago
        The "You" that is doing the analyzing can obviously learn and grow... otherwise, what's the point of doing anything? And, if you read the original article, you'll see it's not about "catching problems" at all.
        • CodeMage 17y ago
          See, that kind of hostile attitude is what usually turns people away from any advice you might offer. Your assumption that I haven't read the article -- because my wording of my interpretation of it differs from what you expect -- is unwarranted. The article itself was rather interesting and I certainly didn't mean to imply that metacognition is useless. From my point of view, not engaging in any metacognition ever will eventually lead to what I call problems, among which are unwarranted assumptions and failure to consider alternatives. Those are "problems" that I like to "catch" and correct in my own thinking. However, I do believe that one has to draw a line somewhere; otherwise, one risks indulging in what another commenter named "mental masturbation". As for personal growth, I believe there will always be limits to our thinking that cannot be (directly) surpassed by more thinking ;)
          • ahoyhere 17y ago