This site is created with the sole reason of nudging you, the reader, into thinking. Not simply thinking, but thinking for yourself. The goals is to develop a skill set and a discipline of thinking, that will allow you to gather, filter and evaluate information, separate arguments from opinions and making decisions on your best interest according your own ethical code and needs.

This will be done via content, based purely on reason and logic, explanation of behavior – it’s highs and it’s lows, observations and interpretations of various works, studies and experiments, as well experiences – both collective and my own. The presentation itself will be as readable as possible, without sacrificing the integrity and the depth of the information. Special care will be taken in order to be objective, clear and not taken out of context. [click to continue…]

I will describe a situation. You are, perhaps a little bored, perhaps at work or home, when you see an item for sale and for some reason this item looks very appealing to you. Perhaps because of the traits of this item and the combination with the price, and availability – you end up buying it.

It happens before you know it. You feel that satisfying surge of joy – of something new, something that you have now, something you didn’t have before.

And then time passes – days, weeks and you have this strange feeling of regret, “buyers remorse” or whatever you phrase it. You wonder what you saw in it, what made you buy it.

This story is all too familiar. The item is different for each person – shoes, clothes, watches, pens, notebooks, games, films, books, gadgets and so on and on. And it can be expensive.

All that said, sometimes you don’t even touch the item for ages, only to find it obsolete, collecting dust in some obscure place.

Those situations vary a lot. The point, however, is at the end we have this unpleasant feeling both with the item we bought and with our own action. Maybe even a disappointment with ourselves. [click to continue…]

(this article is part of a series. You can read the rest here)

Here, we continue the subject started in being honest with yourself.

Experience.

During the full length of our life we gain experience. Success, failures, trial and error, observations – we learn and we grow. At the same time it is naive to say that all people, with the same amount of experience, have learned the same.

Unfortunately some of us, at some point of our life, tend to close the gates for new learning. And since we can’t discuss all possible reasons for this in a single article, we will focus on one very effective area – admitting your mistakes.

We are humans and there is no situation where we will always do the right thing, succeed and manage to do well (at least in the practical description of the word). We will attempt many times, many things, and we will fail a lot of them. Many of the times the failure will be our own fault.

And this is the pivot point. [click to continue…]

(this article is part of a series. See the rest here.)

Honesty. This word says so much. Yet, what actually is honesty? What does being honest means? If you ask twenty people, most likely each answer will differ in meaning.

Wikipedia has a very good description on honesty (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honesty).

Keep something in mind though – our society is not suited to live in 100% honest environment. Adopting such approach may lead you to a lot of trouble, including danger to your life. Not to mention being honest does not mean being right, correct, accurate and so on. It means you saying what you mean, saying what you think is true.

Yet we’re not here to discuss virtues.

Since we can’t actually be honest with everyone, practically, we can at least be honest with ourselves.

And it’s tougher than it sounds. We are prone to deceiving ourselves in a lot of ways. [M. Shermer on self deception - TED talk, 20 mins]. Such deceiving allows us to be right, to be comfortable with ourselves and our actions. Unfortunately it is also a barrier to self-growth.

So, how to avoid this barrier? [click to continue…]

(this article is part of a series articles. You can see the rest here)

Doubt yourself? Seriously?

That sounds like the worst advice ever! All the self improvement books, videos, courses of self-esteem preach believing in yourself! How, suddenly, doubting in yourself can be good? Not to mention we live in world full of issues related to lacking self-esteem.

And how the heck it can lead to confidence?

What can you gain by doubting yourself?

Simply, you will grow better – far more proficient, humble and reliable.

There is a method to this madness.

We live in a complex world. From society dynamics, through elaborate business structures, government and laws, to relationships. It’s all vastly complex. Sometimes we think we got a hold of it, yet we don’t. We are confident we understand something, and then we find we don’t. We are convinced we can do something, and we fail.

And don’t get me wrong, nothing against failing, but in such drastic changes – from confident to failure – we tend to blame other things, people, events, situation. We close ourselves to the lessons of experience. We stay ignorant. And that’s not helping. [click to continue…]