The heroes of an epic adventure

A team of researchers interviewed a group of people who've been through a course of psychotherapy this is what they found:  

Those former patients who currently enjoyed better psychological health tended to narrate heroic stories in which they bravely battled their symptoms and emerged victorious in the end.

In other words, these people saw themselves as the heroes of an epic adventure and their problems as obstacles that are part of the hero's journey. Now crucially, in those accounts. there was a dominant recurring theme around personal agency. This is the sense that you are the subject influencing your own actions and life circumstances just like the hero in pretty much any story you've ever come across.  

So how can we do this for ourselves?

Tip number one is to practice self-distancing, which is a simple act of viewing yourself from the outside in. It allows you to take a calmer, more objective view on the events of your life.

Tip number two is to focus on building your sense of personal agency. My recommendation is to start by practicing your ability to take intentional action. The capacity to intentionally set and achieve goals is widely considered a cornerstone of self-agency.

Hazel Gale

Why you make terrible life choices

You seek evidence that confirms your beliefs because being wrong sucks. Being wrong means you’re not as smart as you thought. So you end up seeking information that confirms what you already know.

When you walk into every interaction trying to prove yourself right, you’re going to succumb to confirmation bias-the human tendency to seek, interpret and remember information that confirms your own pre-existing beliefs.

Researchers studied two groups of children in school. The first group avoided challenging problems because it came with a high risk of being wrong. The second group actively sought out challenging problems for the learning opportunity, even though they might be wrong. They found that the second group consistently outperformed the first.

Focus less on being right and more on experiencing life with curiosity and wonder. When you’re willing to be wrong, you open yourself up to new insights.

Lakshmi Mani

The five different types of impostor syndrome

Impostor Syndrome Archetypes

According to Dr. Valerie Young, a leading expert on the subject of impostor syndrome, these feelings of self doubt are not one-size-fits-all. Here are the five different types of impostor syndrome:

#1 Expert - You expect to know everything and feel ashamed when you don't.

#2 Soloist - You believe work must be accomplished alone and refuse to take any credit if you received any kind of assistance.

#3 Natural Genius - You tell yourself that everything must be handled with ease, otherwise it's not "natural talent".

#4 Superperson - You feel you should be able to excel at every role you take on in your life.

#5 Perfectionist - You set impossibly high standards for yourself and beat yourself up when you don't reach them.

Understanding the different types of impostor syndrome is an important first step, as each manifestation requires a unique toolkit of solutions to help overcome this common psychological trap experienced by professionals.

Read about the strategies to combat each type here.

Building Self-confidence

Formulate and stamp indelibly on your mind a mental picture of yourself succeeding. Hold this picture tenaciously. Never permit it to fade.

Do not be awestruck by other people and try to copy them. Nobody can be you as efficiently as YOU can. Remember also that most people, despite their confident appearance and demeanor, are often as scared as you are and as doubtful of themselves.  

Norman Vincent Peale, The Power of Positive Thinking

What know-it-alls don’t know

Know-it-alls can be insufferable, and now there’s new evidence that they know less than they’d have you believe. Researchers from Cornell and Tulane universities found that self-proclaimed experts are more prone to “overclaiming”—essentially, pretending to have extensive knowledge of something they’re clueless about. In the study, 100 volunteers were asked to rate their level of knowledge in various subjects, such as biology, literature, and personal finance. When quizzed on 15 different economic terms, the people who fancied themselves financial gurus were far more likely to claim they were familiar with phenomena such as “pre-rated stocks” and “fixed-rate deduction” that were actually complete fictions. Tests on the other topics revealed similar results—even when participants were warned that some terms would be phony. “Our work suggests that the seemingly straightforward task of judging one’s knowledge may not be so simple,” researcher Stav Atir tells Science Daily, “particularly for individuals who believe they have a relatively high level of knowledge to begin with.”

The Week Magazine, August 7, 2015

An expert on human blind spots gives advice on how to think

A lot of the issues or problems we get into, we get into because we’re doing it all by ourselves. We’re relying on ourselves. We’re making decisions as our own island, if you will. And if we consult, chat, schmooze with other people, often we learn things or get different perspectives that can be quite helpful.

An active social life, active social bonds, in many different ways tends to be something that’s healthy for people. Social bonds can also be informationally healthy as well. So that’s more on a top, more abstract level, if you will. That is, don’t try to do it yourself. Doing it yourself is when you get into trouble.

David Dunning quoted in Vox 

I Know because the People around me Think they Know

If I think I understand because the people around me think they understand, and the people around me all think they understand because the people around them all think they understand, then it turns out we can all have this strong sense of understanding even though no one really has any idea what they're talking about.

Everyone has a compulsion to be right, meaning that they want the people around them to think they're right, and this is easily achieved by mouthing the things that the people around you say. And people who are more capable tend to be better at finding ways to interpret new facts in line with their community's preconceptions.

I like to live in communities that put a premium on getting things right even when they fly in the face of social norms. This means living with constant tension, but it's worth it.

Steven Sloman quoted in Vox

Winners are more likely to Cheat

"When people succeed in competition against others, it seems to compromise their ethics. It makes them more likely to cheat afterwards," (said Amos Schurr, a professor of psychology at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel).

The problem, he says, seems to be a very specific type of success: the kind that involves social comparison, the sort that means doing better than others, instead of just doing well. And he believes it all boils down to a sense of entitlement that beating others in sports, business, politics, or any other form of head-to-head competition seems to foster in victors.

"Dishonesty is a pretty complex phenomenon — there are all sorts of mechanisms behind it," said Schurr. "But people who win competitions feel more entitled, and that feeling of entitlement is what predicts dishonesty."

In other words, when people win against others, they tend to think they're better, or more deserving. And that thinking helps them justify cheating, since, after all, they're the rightful heir to whatever throne is next — "If I'm better than you, I might as well make sure I win, because I deserve to anyway."

Roberto A. Ferdman writing in the Washington Post