In the middle of writing this comment, I realized that I have no experience with IIM, so I’m not qualified to speak from experience. Therefore, please believe what I’m saying only because logic requires that it be true.
For the exam, visualize yourself knowing the material, or getting a good grade, or finishing school, or getting a good job. The technique requires you to feel the desire to achieve in your body, so keep moving forward until you hit something that gives a physical reaction. Boom, you’ve completed the first two steps, so now you can do the third step: compare your current situation to that, while still feeling good about “that”. According to what Eby says, your brain should then start planning how to achieve “that”, working down from whatever goal you discovered until it hits what you need to do next—which may or may not be actually studying for the exam.
For the exercise routine, same thing. Visualize yourself at the gym, or exercising, or having finished your routine, or being in good (or better) shape, or looking attractive, or living longer.
In the middle of writing this comment, I realized that I have no experience with IIM, so I’m not qualified to speak from experience. Therefore, please believe what I’m saying only because logic requires that it be true.
I thank you for placing this qualification on your statement. As it happens, you are entirely correct, but that’s very often not the case when you try to apply far-brain logic to near-brain emotions. I have to teach people to distrust logical answers, because emotional logic isn’t based on understanding things. Your emotional brain is more of an outside-view frequentist than an inside-view Bayesian, you might say. ;-)
At any rate, it’s subject to a different set of biases than the “far” brain, so far-brain reasoning tends to use a very wrong “theory of mind” when guessing at one’s own emotional motivations.
Not from flawed premises, you can’t. And most of the premises people typically assume about their own motivations are seriously flawed. Thus, people can use perfectly valid logic to construct reasonable, elegant theories about their behavior that are nonetheless 100% irrelevant to how they’re actually generating those behaviors.
you can’t trust that your brain is logical.
Actually, your brain is logical, in the sense that a computer is—it does what it’s programmed to do, even if what it’s programmed to do is stupid. ;-)
I did the former.
I should probably clarify what I mean by “distrust logical answers”. I should’ve said, “distrust logical answers to emotional or experiential questions”, or “distrust ‘far’ answers to ‘near’ questions”. The question of one’s motivation for doing a thing is “near”, so generating an answer from the “far” side of the brain is pure confabulation. Thus, a logical, abstract, sophisticated answer to that question is not actually an answer to that question.
In the middle of writing this comment, I realized that I have no experience with IIM, so I’m not qualified to speak from experience. Therefore, please believe what I’m saying only because logic requires that it be true.
For the exam, visualize yourself knowing the material, or getting a good grade, or finishing school, or getting a good job. The technique requires you to feel the desire to achieve in your body, so keep moving forward until you hit something that gives a physical reaction. Boom, you’ve completed the first two steps, so now you can do the third step: compare your current situation to that, while still feeling good about “that”. According to what Eby says, your brain should then start planning how to achieve “that”, working down from whatever goal you discovered until it hits what you need to do next—which may or may not be actually studying for the exam.
For the exercise routine, same thing. Visualize yourself at the gym, or exercising, or having finished your routine, or being in good (or better) shape, or looking attractive, or living longer.
I thank you for placing this qualification on your statement. As it happens, you are entirely correct, but that’s very often not the case when you try to apply far-brain logic to near-brain emotions. I have to teach people to distrust logical answers, because emotional logic isn’t based on understanding things. Your emotional brain is more of an outside-view frequentist than an inside-view Bayesian, you might say. ;-)
At any rate, it’s subject to a different set of biases than the “far” brain, so far-brain reasoning tends to use a very wrong “theory of mind” when guessing at one’s own emotional motivations.
You can trust logic; you can’t trust that your brain is logical. I did the former.
Not from flawed premises, you can’t. And most of the premises people typically assume about their own motivations are seriously flawed. Thus, people can use perfectly valid logic to construct reasonable, elegant theories about their behavior that are nonetheless 100% irrelevant to how they’re actually generating those behaviors.
Actually, your brain is logical, in the sense that a computer is—it does what it’s programmed to do, even if what it’s programmed to do is stupid. ;-)
I should probably clarify what I mean by “distrust logical answers”. I should’ve said, “distrust logical answers to emotional or experiential questions”, or “distrust ‘far’ answers to ‘near’ questions”. The question of one’s motivation for doing a thing is “near”, so generating an answer from the “far” side of the brain is pure confabulation. Thus, a logical, abstract, sophisticated answer to that question is not actually an answer to that question.