We all get so caught up in the day-to-day that we forget to take a moment and think about why we’re doing what we’re doing. We become so busy that we lose track of what’s important to us.
In the case of item generation, there is a simple reason why we forget to think about why we are doing what we are doing. It is because our minds are always looking to see if we are doing something that is going to cause problems.
This tendency to look for problems and to do things that are likely to cause problems is referred to as “mental inertia” and is a major contributor to our day-to-day behavior. Like in a game of chess, where you have to look for an opening that leads to a winning pawn, we also have to look for our opening that will win us the game.
In a world of mental inertia, you can’t have that. You have to make a decision, and then you need to move. The mental process that goes into making decisions is called meta-cognition, and it’s very important to our mental well-being. Meta-cognition involves consciously examining our actions (and mental states) to see what we should be doing.
If you play chess, you can’t just go into the game and move because you don’t really have any idea what you’re doing, you just kind of go along and do what you’re told, which is to move. In other words, you don’t really know how the game is played, you just go along doing what you think is best. The same thing goes for decision making in life.
We all know that we make decisions in life based on gut feelings and our own personal experiences. The problem is that this is not enough for us to have a rational thought process. That is why there are a lot of people who decide to go into professions like medicine, law, and so on based on personal experience, not on rational thought.
So, when someone asks you what you would do in a situation like that, what do you say? Is it, “I dunno, it’s hard to tell what’s in my best interest.” Is it, “I’d do the same thing that you would do.” Or is it, “I’d do the same thing that you would do.
Well, that’s like asking me what I would do if I was a doctor and someone told me that I was going to get a job as a doctor. It seems so simple, but I would probably just tell them that their solution is to get a job as a doctor so they won’t have to be around me.
This reminds me of an earlier comment that I made on a previous post, but it’s worth looking at more closely. You see, there are some situations we all want to avoid. Sometimes, we want to avoid situations that are going to make us fail on a personal level, that don’t have any purpose in the larger scheme of things. But there are situations we want to avoid situations that are going to cause us to fail professionally.
Its the latter situation that comes up with a lot in situations like the one I mentioned. But then there are situations like the former that create problems. I will be using this as an example.