You can’t, necessarily. Right? But you can increase your chances. One important question is do you really want to know the truth? Or would you rather just believe what you want to believe? It’s worth consciously deciding. Because if you don’t make the decision to want to know the truth, you’re probably inadvertently deciding to…
Exactly. Maybe all those weirdos you met in life weren’t weird? Maybe you just didn’t understand them? Maybe you didn’t consider how they arrived at a different point to you? Maybe being blindly convinced that you’re ‘normal’ and then calling people you can’t be bothered to understand “weird” is really weird? Or maybe I just…
…don’t think alike. They challenge each other to think again. Intellectual chemistry occurs not when you both agree but when you enjoy disagreeing and then work together to get it right rather than be right. “Even if I don’t like it, what parts of what they’re saying could be right? And in which situations?” is…
Never before have our minds been so ambushed from all directions, constantly. With all the emotionally-charged noise out there, social media, fake news, echo chambers, amplified fear, us Vs them mentality, and volume turned up on biases, it can be hard to stop the external environment from owning your thinking. And there’s no doubt it’s…
Here’s an efficient way to strengthen your thinking, learning, problem solving and progress in just about anything. I learned it off a poster on my boys classroom wall when he was little. But we can all use it creatively. When you’re stuck, follow these steps to get unstuck, in this order: First, consult your BRAIN….
People tell me they struggle to know what questions to ask when meeting people, switching on curiosity, seeking to understand, helping others to think, solving problems, making buying decisions, or when simply learning something. This can get you started. Use the 7 W’s: Keep repeating those in your head. I have them at my fingertips….
So many arguments grow because of differing definitions of words or terms. (See Layne’s Law). If you’re arguing, pause to ask and understand how the other person describes specific words or terms you’ve used. Then describe how you see that word. Then, pick things up from the new understanding, not the word. You might find…
“There’s a way to do it better – find it.” Thomas Edison My favoutite quote of all time. So it gets its own post. There’s always a way to do it better. Why always? Because things change fast. And the best way has a use by date. Then there’s a new way to do it…
“Everything is the way it is because it got that way.” – D’Arcy Thompson What better way is there to summarise evolution? And to explain literally everything. Now how it got that way is worth exploring.
A helpful thought experiment: Imagine a huge audience were watching your life on a screen. And they’ve been fully briefed on what you want and don’t want to happen in your life. They know it better than you do. Not only that, they get to see every single thought you have in subtitles on the…