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.
-- 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.
-- 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" ;)
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 ;)
I didn't intend to sound hostile. I think we're talking past each other here :)
Also, I agree with you 100% on mental masturbation. (I also blog occasionally @ http://www.justfuckingship.com/). But I am tired of every freakin web app looking, acting, and being essentially the same.
We also define problems differently. I think it's a bigger issue that all web app are basically the same, than if a given individual sits and thinks too hard and never does anything. But that's because I have barely any problems with executing any more... because I've worked on it.
Have you heard of the categorization of failures?
Failure Level 1 - Doing the right thing, but doing it badly.
Failure Level 2 - Doing the wrong thing, whether you do it well or badly.
I mostly like to poke people about Level 2. No blog/article/motivational speaker/whatever can do everything so I pick my battles :)
I didn't say you could avoid making ALL mistakes. You can avoid certain mistakes.
> On the other hand, I've had many times where I overrode my intuition and thought "damn, should have trusted myself"
That's exactly what I'm talking about. :)
> This is the big fallacy of questioning your every thought and intention.
I never said question every thought. I also never said that the goal in life is to avoid making all mistakes.
See, you've got a reason in posting this, and for putting words in my mouth and, in my opinion, saying "No" to me while On The Other Hand giving an example of what I meant.
You also left off my real-world example of questioning your own motives, which your Covey anecdote doesn't negate in any way.
Ok, I agree with you on that piece. I still disagree that self-congratulatory thoughts need constant analysis for something as simple as enjoying some milk.
-- Why do you think that is?
What a great example of how, yet again, you're thinking too deeply here... as if I had some underlying internal motive for ignoring your one example.
I didn't address it because I ran out of time and was headed out to lunch with friends. So I mashed the reply button and figured I addressed as much as I could.
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.