Humility

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Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people CALL ‘humble’ nowadays: he will not be a greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody. Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a bit envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.

CS Lewis, Mere Christianity

How Birth Order affects you

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Everyone takes it personally when it comes to birth order. 

Children and parents alike are profoundly affected by the constellations of siblings.. But that doesn’t mean the effects of birth order are as clear or straightforward as we sometimes make them sound. Indeed, birth order can be used to explain every trait and its precise opposite. I’m competitive, driven — typical oldest child! My brother, two years younger, is even more competitive, more driven — typical second child, always trying to catch up! 

“Too many parents are haunted by experiences both good and bad that they identify with their birth order,” said Dr. Peter A. Gorski, a professor of pediatrics, public health and psychiatry at the University of South Florida. And that might lead them to classify their own children according to birth order, he went on, which in turn can lead to a sense of identification or even rejection and to “self-fulfilling prophecies.”

“Birth order doesn’t cause anything,” (says) Frank J. Sulloway, a visiting scholar at the University of California Berkeley Dr. Sulloway said. “It’s simply a proxy for the actual mechanisms that go on in family dynamics that shape character and personality.”

Now, of course birth order played into my patients’ patterns, but so did gender and birth spacing and, above all, temperament. 

"I wouldn’t discount the impact of birth order,” Dr. Gorski told me. “It sets up the structure of one’s place in relation to others from the beginning, as we learn how to react to people of different ages and different relationships.” 

Perri Klass writing in the New York Times

 

Boy tells his dad 'I'm so proud of you'

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Sunk Cost Fallacy

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We all have seen the sunk cost fallacy in action at some point, whether it be sitting through that bad movie because we have already paid for it or finishing that awful book because we were already halfway through. Everyone has been in a situation where they ended up wasting more time because they were trying to salvage the time they had already invested. A sunk cost, also known as a retrospective cost, is one that has already been incurred and cannot be recovered by any additional action. The sunk cost fallacy refers to the tendency of human beings to make decisions based on how much of an investment they have already made, which leads to even more investment but no returns whatsoever. Sometimes, hard as it is, the best thing to do is to let go.

A way to save yourself from this cognitive bias is by focusing on future benefits and costs rather than the already lost past costs. You have to develop the habit, hard as it is, of ignoring the previous cost information.   

Rahul Agarwal writing in Built in