Another reason to be kind

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment

In each instance, we readily forgive our own minds but look harshly upon the minds of other people.

I found this nice 2012 article on r/psychology about how our experience and intuition fool us into making wrong predictions. The emphasis in the article is on underestimating others and overestimating ourselves. It says that there’s no amount of knowledge about the thinking errors and biases that will make our thinking quality better but it can make us slow down and invest more effort when we recognize that we would like good results.

Not sure if the article is worth a $6 subscription but is definitely worth the read, and so is the main source for it – the book Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.

The biggest challenge over the next 6 months

~ Veselin ~ 1 Comment
Daily writing prompt
What is the biggest challenge you will face in the next six months?

An easy answer would be some individual problem, like health, loss, or work. The hard answer is – dealing with uncertainty without dwelling on the endless negative outcomes. I need my imagination to be helpful.

People have come to many ways to calm their fortune-telling never-ending internal narrator:

  • Meditation. Whatever the future, focus on the present. Life is simple in the now. Ignore the past.
  • Religion. If God will take care of all of us after all, why worry about the future? Study the very distant past.
  • Psychology. Whatever the future, nobody can take away your past.
  • Capitalism. Imagine this fantastic new car, don’t bother with the other things. Go shopping for dopamine highs.
  • News. Be afraid, be very afraid. We will use your internal narrator to make you come back and buy things.

And so on. It is a long search.