Interesting… It’s true that inversion (as general type, of which the mind projection fallacy is token) is constantly applicable to daily life, in particular to interpersonal relations. Someone may seem too arrogant to be willing to listen to you, but you should always step back and ask whether it might be more useful to restate the problem, “I am not presenting my points in an interesting or persuasive enough way to interest or persuade this person.” These thoughts are two sides of one coin. Each is valuable in some circumstance: the first if you can successfully solve the problem by chiding the person, the second if you can solve the problem by being more interesting or persuasive. (And either can have some not-to-be-overlooked effect on your self-esteem.)
But look—a word of advice on self-discipline, to your readers if you yourself aren’t looking for it. If you think of yourself as a system whose operations you cannot OR can predict, you have lost half the battle before starting. I recognize that you can sometimes e.g. alter some aspects of your environment that you can see affecting you, but if you can’t manage that without coming to think of yourself as a passive recipient of effects upon you, you should change your mindset altogether. In short: DECIDE to work. Just do it.
Also—well said, Uncredible. I find—if I may be hypocritical a moment—that novelty is highly effective; whenever I make some new resolution, it works for some short amount of time. Then I have to make a different one, based on a different principle of hope. The issue is confidence. Once a strategy fails to work once, I no longer have faith in it. What’s more, since I know that confidence is what strategies give me and that I’m prone to lose confidence as soon as one fails to work once, I REALLY no longer have faith in it. It’s a sick cycle. I wouldn’t have that problem if only I would attribute agency to myself...
Interesting… It’s true that inversion (as general type, of which the mind projection fallacy is token) is constantly applicable to daily life, in particular to interpersonal relations. Someone may seem too arrogant to be willing to listen to you, but you should always step back and ask whether it might be more useful to restate the problem, “I am not presenting my points in an interesting or persuasive enough way to interest or persuade this person.” These thoughts are two sides of one coin. Each is valuable in some circumstance: the first if you can successfully solve the problem by chiding the person, the second if you can solve the problem by being more interesting or persuasive. (And either can have some not-to-be-overlooked effect on your self-esteem.)
But look—a word of advice on self-discipline, to your readers if you yourself aren’t looking for it. If you think of yourself as a system whose operations you cannot OR can predict, you have lost half the battle before starting. I recognize that you can sometimes e.g. alter some aspects of your environment that you can see affecting you, but if you can’t manage that without coming to think of yourself as a passive recipient of effects upon you, you should change your mindset altogether. In short: DECIDE to work. Just do it.
Also—well said, Uncredible. I find—if I may be hypocritical a moment—that novelty is highly effective; whenever I make some new resolution, it works for some short amount of time. Then I have to make a different one, based on a different principle of hope. The issue is confidence. Once a strategy fails to work once, I no longer have faith in it. What’s more, since I know that confidence is what strategies give me and that I’m prone to lose confidence as soon as one fails to work once, I REALLY no longer have faith in it. It’s a sick cycle. I wouldn’t have that problem if only I would attribute agency to myself...