The fear of being wrong is the first reason why we end up having difficult conversations. Considering we could both be wrong is a good way to approach an argument. Put your beliefs and certainties aside for a sec. Pretend you know nothing and, eventually, you might know something. The first move out of ignorance is to be open trying to make sense of the things you think are wrong, illogical, impossible or weird. In his article « This is how to change someone’s mind », Eric Barker shares so many useful tips to have a better foresight posture.
If you like experiments, stick with me. For this one, you don’t need anything but you and your thoughts. Yes your thoughts, the things that regularly come to your mind without invitation. They can gently come and go or be persistent and haunt you forever. The worst is when you start letting them define who you are. But why is this happening? You did not choose to have those thoughts, right? They just pop up. Spoiler alert! The fight is not about getting rid of them. Your mind is not equipped with a trash, so you have to find a way to handle and manage them. In short, you need a strategy to react to them. To help you do that, Eric Barker details a method that you can experiment with surprising ease: curious observation. If you are a smoker, an emotional eater, a compulsory buyer or a social media addict, you may know how bad these habits are for you, but you still can’t resist the urge to get what you need. This is where curiosity comes into play. You have to be curious about your thoughts. As soon as a thought pops up, Eric Barker suggests to sit there, stay stoic and observe your mind playing dirty tricks on you. You don’t need to resist the bad habit but you need that extra curiosity to raise your awareness. Eventually, this repetitive curiosity will help you build the necessary distance between you and your thoughts and gradually fade the urge to those bad habits. Curiosity is fun and easy. At the end, you are just playing with your mind. And at some point you’ll know it so well that you’ll get the confidence to make fun of it. Let’s play!
Stoicism doesn’t advocate for fatality or resignation, it teaches you acceptance and resilience, which is how to accept and get better at getting over things. Your level of resilience is determined by your ability to get over things quicker and healthily. It’s all about knowing yourself better, being curious about your emotions and building a memory to better process them. Sadness, fear, disgust, anger, surprise are all the basic emotions we need to feel and release to live more peacefully.
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Fear of being wrong
The fear of being wrong is the first reason why we end up having difficult conversations. Considering we could both be wrong is a good way to approach an argument. Put your beliefs and certainties aside for a sec. Pretend you know nothing and, eventually, you might know something. The first move out of ignorance is to be open trying to make sense of the things you think are wrong, illogical, impossible or weird. In his article « This is how to change someone’s mind », Eric Barker shares so many useful tips to have a better foresight posture.