#using-system-1

Examples

• Other-ising
  • Taking the "Outside view" on yourself
  • How would you advise someone else in a similar position?
• Pre-hindsight (part of Murphyjitsu, a broad technique out of CFAR)
  • Typical example: "Two months from now, we break up. What went wrong?"
  • In short, assume you already know the answer & let intuition fill in the blanks
  • "If a future version of myself travels to the now, what would they advise me?"
• Concretizing – unpacking all the details
• Thinking in bets
  • Even if you won't make a public bet, you can try going through the motions as if. Like, actually log onto fatebook.io and formulate a bet you'd stand behind, giving it a judgment day and a percentage. That gets you in touch with what you truly believe.
    • Bonus if you think about how much money you'd dare to put on this. When the involvement of money actually affects your answer, that's your inner sim giving you its true expectations rather than letting you believe the stories you like to tell.

An #adhd thing, especially among people who don't suspect they have ADHD. You don't identify yourself as someone who is unable to follow through on their decisions because it seems to you that of course, you can. When you need to.

You have to shatter the delusion by asking e.g. "Okay, so when did you last follow a decision that came from yourself?"

(Decisions that could be acted-on right away don't count.)

I'll wait.

In support of the delusion is cryptomnesia: the habit of forgetting all the times you tried something new and it failed to stick, so this time around, you still think it's a new trick and honestly believe it will work.

You suffer from unassailable optimism. Your "can I?"-meter is stuck on "yes" and you never learn.

I suppose it's nice that an unending stream of disappointments never kills your enthusiasm. But it's seriously maladaptive… It's why when someone texts you asking to do them a favor, you don't reply to the message because you're not sure when you can do it, but you definitely think you can eventually, you just feel you shouldn't say so until it's happening. No matter how many hours or days or weeks pass, you never generate the thought that "maybe I can't", so you don't ever just tell your friend for their information that maybe you can't. You still think you can and you still intend to. Then years pass without a text.

It's a logic failure, and a damn bizarre species of one.

Posing yourself questions in a certain way can unlock something you sort of already knew. Make the answer obvious.

Several variations on this theme.

• Cognitive reframings
• Inner-simulator prompts
• Not generating the answer actively or with words
  • Gendlin's Focusing has helped me a crazy amount
  • Sometimes when people "meditate" they're really just picking up the mail from their subconscious; Meditation vs introspection

The nice thing is that it's easy. Even effortless. When you're lost, you don't have to push yourself to figure out your next move, you don't have to be smart or disciplined. Only aim yourself at the much easier task of doing one of the above. (I favour Focusing)

You essentially ask yourself "what's off?" and wait in silence. You do nothing. You don't control the mental narrative. One does not think up an answer, one waits for it to appear.

Try to avoid phrasing things as questions if they need not be.

For example, an offer of support could sound like an active question:

• "do you need support?"

or it could be a passive statement that requires no response:

• "let me know if you want support"

Do you see how the latter is more relaxing? There's no implicit request for response. That also makes it easier to respond to, ironically.

A hypothesis: don't ask yes/no questions, especially if you're expecting the answer to go one way and the other way would surprise you.

"Can we talk?" (expecting a yes) could just as well be "I'd like to talk to you, let me know when it suits you".

If you're concerned they're not doing well, you can't expect a response when you ask them "How are you doing?"

Instead, spell out the consequence that you'll worry if they don't respond. They may not be aware of that consequence, due to their brain having already disengaged at the sight of the above question, but very few people want to make you worry.

"Tell me something so I don't worry about you".