Bertrand Russell famously said, “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are so certain of themselves and wiser people so full of doubts.”
Over the years, I’ve hammered on the importance of becoming comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity, in questioning all of your most cherished beliefs and dreams, on practicing skepticism, and doubting everything, most importantly yourself. Throughout these posts, I’ve hinted at the fact that our brains are fundamentally unreliable, that we really have no clue what we’re talking about, even when we think we do, and so on.
But I’ve never given concrete examples or explanations. Well, here they are. Eight reasons you can’t trust yourself, as demonstrated by psychology.
Why You Can’t Trust Yourself - Mark Manson - Pocket
I suppose I trust myself, and maybe I shouldn't, that no matter what life throws at me, I'll figure something out.
However, it's worked out so far.
Long article but interesting.
A short sample...
2. You Don’t Have A Clue about What Makes You Happy (or Miserable)
In his book Stumbling on Happiness, Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert shows us that we suck at remembering how something made us feel in the past and guessing how something will make us feel in the future.
For instance, if your favorite sports team loses the big championship game, you feel awful. But it turns out your memory of how awful you felt doesn’t add up to how bad you felt at the time. In fact, you tend to remember bad things being much worse than they actually were and good things being much better than they actually were.
Similarly with projecting into the future, we overestimate how happy good things will make us feel and how unhappy bad things will make us feel. In fact, we’re often not even aware of how we’re actually feeling in the present moment.
This is just yet another argument for not pursuing happiness for its own sake. All the data indicate that we don’t even know what happiness is, nor are we able to control what we do with it if we actually achieve it.
Over the years, I’ve hammered on the importance of becoming comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity, in questioning all of your most cherished beliefs and dreams, on practicing skepticism, and doubting everything, most importantly yourself. Throughout these posts, I’ve hinted at the fact that our brains are fundamentally unreliable, that we really have no clue what we’re talking about, even when we think we do, and so on.
But I’ve never given concrete examples or explanations. Well, here they are. Eight reasons you can’t trust yourself, as demonstrated by psychology.
Why You Can’t Trust Yourself - Mark Manson - Pocket
I suppose I trust myself, and maybe I shouldn't, that no matter what life throws at me, I'll figure something out.
However, it's worked out so far.
Long article but interesting.
A short sample...
2. You Don’t Have A Clue about What Makes You Happy (or Miserable)
In his book Stumbling on Happiness, Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert shows us that we suck at remembering how something made us feel in the past and guessing how something will make us feel in the future.
For instance, if your favorite sports team loses the big championship game, you feel awful. But it turns out your memory of how awful you felt doesn’t add up to how bad you felt at the time. In fact, you tend to remember bad things being much worse than they actually were and good things being much better than they actually were.
Similarly with projecting into the future, we overestimate how happy good things will make us feel and how unhappy bad things will make us feel. In fact, we’re often not even aware of how we’re actually feeling in the present moment.
This is just yet another argument for not pursuing happiness for its own sake. All the data indicate that we don’t even know what happiness is, nor are we able to control what we do with it if we actually achieve it.
