Tag: self-manipulation toolbox

Mistakes and Failures: Why it’s important to differentiate

Akshat Rathi1 Comment

How many times have we looked back at a relatively short period of time (weeks or months) and realized all the things we wronged/failed at and then blamed ourselves for not doing better? I’ve done it many times and every time I’ve felt either miserable or angry.

We often don’t spend the time in differentiating between failures and mistakes and in treating them both as mistakes we lead ourselves on to the path of misery. Seth Godin explains the difference well:

A failure is a project that doesn’t work, an initiative that teaches you something at the same time the outcome doesn’t move you directly closer to your goal.

A mistake is either a failure repeated, doing something for the second time when you should have known better, or a misguided attempt (because of carelessness, selfishness or hubris) that hindsight reminds you is worth avoiding.

Failure is good because there is a lesson at the end of it. We fail and we should learn from those failures so as to not fail again. But when we treat our failures as mistakes, we also inevitably make the mistake of blaming ourselves for all those mistakes. That just ruins all the effort put in to contemplation.

It’s great to have the ability to rush through all that data from the past and cherry-pick that which shows us where we went wrong. We have made great progress because of this ability but only when we’ve also been successful at differentiating failures and mistakes.

(As a side – what makes it hard to do this differentiation is that looking back, of course, we have a lot more data to answer the same questions. A failure might seem like a mistake when it wasn’t at the time.)

No one likes failing or making mistakes but it is definitely easier to deal with the prior than the latter.

Becoming a Strategic Self-Deceiver

Akshat Rathi6 Comments

A few weeks ago David Brooks of the New York Times asked his many readers for a gift, “If you are over 70,  I’d like you to write a brief report on your life so far, an evaluation of what you did well, of what you did not so well and what you learned along the way.”

His reason to make such a request was clear, “These essays will be useful to the young. Young people are educated in many ways, but they are given relatively little help in understanding how a life develops, how careers and families evolve, what are the common mistakes and the common blessings of modern adulthood.” From the many essays that he received, he tried to extract a few general life lessons. One of those many fantastic lessons took me somewhat by surprise.

Beware rumination. There were many long, detailed essays by people who are experts at self-examination. They could finely calibrate each passing emotion. But these people often did not lead the happiest or most fulfilling lives. It’s not only that they were driven to introspection by bad events. Through self-obsession, they seemed to reinforce the very emotions, thoughts and habits they were trying to escape.

Many of the most impressive people, on the other hand, were strategic self-deceivers. When something bad was done to them, they forgot it, forgave it or were grateful for it. When it comes to self-narratives, honesty may not be the best policy.

Self-development is something I am passionate about and self-examination enables me to pursue that passion. Even though I won’t call myself a self-examination expert by any length, reading the above made me question what is it that I exactly do when I work  on self-development. I don’t want an obsession to improve myself to lead to an unhappy life!

But, while re-reading the paragraph, I realised that the more impressive people were ‘strategic self-deceivers’. So they selectively chose to lie to themselves about certain mistakes they made or about certain faults they had and moved on with life, eventually living an impressive life.

So was the route that I took for self-development through self-examination wrong? Not entirely. To be able to successfully deceive oneself would require one to know themselves well enough. Self-examination is then a necessary tool.

What I seem to be able to gather from this reflection is that self-examination can be a double-edged sword. It can lead to giving us the exact information we need about ourselves to enable us to build our confidence or, if over done, it can lead to reinforcing the very thoughts and habits that one wants to overcome.

But now let’s come to the more interesting part of the lesson – strategic self-deception.

Philosophers argue that one cannot, in principle, be successful at self-deception. The reason being that one can not try to convince oneself of something being false when they know that it is true. But leaving the philosophers aside, there are practical ways in which we employ self-deception, I would argue, everyday. I am ready to bet that any of you reading this is probably deceiving yourself of multiple truths right now (of course, if you are able to recognise what exactly it is that you are deceiving yourself about then you will have failed at self-deception!).

An example of self-deception is when we try to forget the pain associated with a certain event. It could be a break-up or the passing away of a loved one. We may be capable of accepting what happened and moving on but the shorter, faster route is to lie to oneself. It may also be an intermediate step in acceptance (when unsuccessful at pulling off this self-deception, we are supposed to be in denial).

Forgetting events, overcoming fears, facing danger and taking risks, all to a certain extent involve self-deception. We know, at some level, that we are very bad at analysing risks and to be able to do something risky (like bungee jumping) we have to convince ourselves that it is not as risky as it seems. In that self-deception enables the person to take risks that he would not normally.

A strategic self-deceiver is one who is able to trick themselves about the right things. Of course, knowing the right things is the more difficult part.

Choose a Better Belief System

Akshat Rathi5 Comments

I deeply care about how I can make the most out of what I have. I obsess about efficiency and I try my best to find the tools that can help me become more productive. This post is about belief systems and how striving to have a better one in place is the least that we can do if we are serious about taking better decisions. After all, better decisions lead to more productive use of resources.

Because belief systems are something very personal, let me make this clear before I proceed. I am an atheist but I don’t have any issues with believers. I may not understand the tonnes of things that people do in the name of God but I respect people’s freedom of choice. Actually, I’ve pondered about this long enough to come to a point where I understand the need for religion in our society as it exists today (but why’s that is for another day).

So you ask, “If I am ok with all other belief systems then why am I writing this post?”

I am writing this because I think for those who really care about taking better decisions, having a better belief system is absolutely essential.

So you ask, “Why do belief systems matter to making decisions?”

A few days ago I wrote about how if we hone our instincts at a particular task, it frees up our brainpower to do more creative things. When doing a task repeatedly we can develop muscle memory and store some vital information in the sub-conscious mind, to help free the conscious mind to do more. Thus, once the instincts have been developed (like balancing the bicycle while riding) then we let our sub-conscious do most things and actively use the conscious mind to do more important/creative things (like avoiding colliding with that car in front or doing a wheelie).

Similarly, when taking decision, we rely heavily on what underpins our thought process – our belief system. Having built this belief system over the years we find ourselves in a position where we can rely on only a limited set of data points to take any decision. If you did not have a belief system (efficient or not), you would have had to gather so many more data points to take decisions on simple things like whether you should steal your neighbour’s car or not.

So you ask, “Where do better belief systems come in picture?”

Well, clearly if belief systems play such a fundamental role in absolutely everything we do then having better belief systems will help us take better decisions.

So you ask, “What makes a belief system better?”

A belief system that is based on more accurate beliefs about the world around us will help us deal with our lives better and thus make a better belief system. Aligning ourselves with how the world really works must surely lead to best data points to take decisions, no?

This brings me to the main concern of this post, I believe that believing in God is not a good system of belief because it does not agree with the world as we know it. Directly or indirectly, belief in God can make us take decisions which do not agree with the reality of our world. It can induce people to believe in homeopathy or worse, alternative medicine. It can make scientists believe in lucky charms . The list of crazies goes on…

I know what you are thinking now, “Yes, people do irrational things all the time… it won’t affect me. My relationship with God is just for having a sense of peace in my life. I won’t do these things.” We all suffer from the illusion of control, wake up.

And if you still find that certain beliefs don’t affect your decisions then it’s best to get rid of them now, for you never know when they might. It’s better to not be affected than being affected negatively, right?

Changing belief systems is hard. I know because I spent a good deal of time trying to get over the concept of karma which was an integral part of my way of thinking. No one had put it there, I’d developed it by observing those around me. But when reality struck me and the evidence stared me in the face, I couldn’t ignore it.

Of course, if you don’t agree with reality of the world as is shown by the evidence that we have then I am not going to argue with you. But if you do believe that we live in this world which follows certain rules and regulations then, with all due to respect to your belief systems, I think that you can take much better decisions in life if you don’t believe in God.