Greg Proffit Writing

Tag: good thinking

  • Sequential Thinking—The Backwarder We Go, The Forwarder We Get

    Sequential Thinking—The Backwarder We Go, The Forwarder We Get

    Air-Traffic Controllers are masters of sequential thinking
    Air-Traffic Controllers are masters of sequential thinking (Shutterstock Image: Licensed to Author)

    # 70 on my 99 Life Tips–A List is: Sequential thinking is a life-skill that must be practiced and mastered over a lifetime.

    Sequential thinking is the kind that arranges knowledge and actions into ordered steps.

    It can also ease the fear associated with uncertainty. Each step taken towards unknown answers to perplexing questions follows and builds upon answers of which we are certain—having learned them by answering previous questions.

    This kind of thinking shows up everywhere, but the construction trades are a good example. Foundations before floor systems. Floors before walls. Walls before ceilings and roofs.

    Air-traffic controllers use sequential thinking to do their job. The controller takes lots of data into account to organize and arrange a sequence of one-at-a-time landings onto a single runaway. The perfect picture of linear, sequential order.  

    Humans usually experience time sequentially—as a linear series of causal events and their effects (one thing causes another which causes another… ad infinitum), connected one to another like the cars of a train.  

    We experience the slow unfolding of time, living it forward, understanding it backward, as Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, put it. 

    And while there are a variety of thinking modes, each with its own characteristics—making them suitable to grapple with different kinds of problems; sequential thinking seems to have application to problems of all types.

    The Backwarder we go the Forwarder we get

    Sequential thinking takes two forms. One works backwards, the other forwards. 

    The first works backwards from a desired goal, thinking through the correct order of steps needed to reach that goal. Careful thinking of this type will prevent mishaps like installing sheet rock on walls before the electricians have wired them.

    The other type moves forward by asking a series of questions. Progress requires answering the first question before moving to the next. In this way, the answers to simple questions link, building upon one another, to solve a more complex problem.

    [If I live in an apartment and I want to own a dog, what are the things I will need to know in order to make that desire a reality? The size of the dog, the breed, the pet fee, etc.]

    Or if I want to write for a living—I’ll need to determine the things that are necessities for that to happen. There may not be as many variables as landing airplanes, but entertaining abstract thoughts about the beauty of written words and how cool it would be to live in Paris or Spain like Hemingway won’t get the job done.

    The Takeaway

    Is sequential thinking the best way to think? No, I wouldn’t say that. But it fits the model of time as we experience it. And frankly, we’re all practicing a semblance of it, since we can only think of one thing at a time anyway. So, no matter your habitually preferred thinking style, at some point you’ll need to plan how to deliver to us what you’ve been thinking about. So, it’s a skill worth working on.

    Thus endeth the sequence of words. Thanks for playing.

  • To Feel Different – Think Different

    Person in yoga posture says, "Rule Your Mind or It Will Rule You. To Feel Different, Think Different.
    Rule your mind or it will rule you. To Feel Different – Think Different. (Adobe Stock Image licensed to author)

    # 49 on my, 99 Life Tips – A List is: To change how you feel, you must either change how, or what, you’re thinking.

    “Nothing can harm you as much as your own thoughts unguarded.”

    ~paraphrase of a quote attributed to Gautama Buddha

    “As he thinks, so he is; as he continues to think, so he remains.” 

    ― James Allen, As a Man Thinketh

    The second quote is an enlargement upon a clause of Proverbs 23:7, which says:

    ”As he thinks in his heart, so is he…”

    ~ Proverbs 23:7

    We Live The Lives We’re Willing To Live

    My essay, Your Will Cannot Control Your Emotions…, focuses on what the will cannot do. The focus of this piece is what you can choose to do. You can change your life. You can change how you feel. But to change how you feel, you must either change how, or what, you’re thinking.

    Greg, are you saying that my life and my emotional condition are the products of my thoughts?

    Yes, dear Reader. That’s exactly what I’m saying. I wouldn’t expect you to take me at my word. After all, who am I to you?

    But please don’t let the fact that I am unknown to you keep you from hearing these truths. Perhaps you stumbled this post at a time when you have ears to hear exactly what it is you need to hear. 

    Each of us lives the life we’re willing to live. Period. You woke up today in a life your current thinking has created for you. Our inner narrator acclimates to, and perpetuates our script. We dutifully play out our scenes. Believing ourselves to be free, we fail to recognize that too large a percentage of our lives is spent responding and reacting to stimuli over which we exercise little to no control. We feel ourselves going through the motions of a life somehow not our own.

    To Be Free Is To Think

    And even if we feel bad about it, we too quickly grow accustomed to it. Perhaps we don’t like the direction our life has taken. But if we never stop to think, not just reflexively respond, our lives will not change. The most free thing a person can do is think for themselves. All freedom blooms from that first, most basic, unchainable freedom. 

    But if you allow your mind and attention to be either captured, or misdirected, you’re giving that freedom away, or using it in a way that will do you no good. Unless you learn to be awake, aware, and not on auto-pilot, your life won’t change. How could it? Who will change it? Who will change your emotions or your circumstances, if not you?

    These are psychological, physiological, philosophical, and spiritual truths. There are volumes of writings that prove my assertions, inasmuch as these ideas can be proven.

    Again, I say, if you want to change how you feel, you must either change how, or what, you’re thinking. The surest, and only way, to get a different output, is to change the inputs.

    Your Thinking Creates Your Life and Your Feelings About It

    You will never feel good while thinking about what’s bad. You will never find solutions while focusing on the problems. You feel bad because you spend more time looking at what is wrong in your life and world than what is good and right in it. You find no solutions because you don’t allow yourself to imagine what your life would look like fixed, absent the problems that plague it. Without a vision of a better state of affairs, how do you know which direction to go? How do you know which means to use, which levers to pull, which variables to change, to get to that imagined result?

    Change in your feelings and circumstances may not happen overnight. It may take a lot of work. There may be false starts and resets, but if you keep thinking of the life you want, and the steps you can take to get there, you will one day wake up in a different life those different thoughts created. And you’ll feel fundamentally different for the entire journey.

    I suspect you’re feeling a tiny flame of inspirational hope that things can be different. That you can feel better about your life. Yes, you can. Fan that tiny flame. It will be hard, but worthwhile work, to change your patterns, change your thinking, and transform your life into the one you actually want to be living. You can do it. You’re the only one who can. You hold the keys.

  • Don’t Just Give Advice, Give A New Way To Think About The Problem

    Don’t Just Give Advice, Give A New Way To Think About The Problem

    # 20 on my, 99 Life Tips – A List is: When asked for advice, rather than giving the inquirer a solution to their problem, give him a new way to think about his problem.

    The corollary to this tip is, Do Not Give Advice Unless Asked. Unsolicited advice makes the adviser feel good about himself but seldom gives any assistance to the hearer, since they were not in the market for it. I am most successful wearing my sage hat when I wait to be asked before indiscriminately imparting the profundity of my wisdom. Especially when I preface my own advice by tying to provide a new way to think about the problem. This seems to be better than the standard, ”Well, if I was in your shoes…” approach.

    There is a fancy word for problem solving systems. The word is heuristic(s). We all employ them. Some methodologies are more useful than others. Some mental shortcuts are more harmful than helpful, being little more than thinly veiled cognitive biases. I have written before about a particular bias called the Availability Heuristic. Regardless of your particular way of solving problems, here is a variation of quote attributed to Einstein:

    ”One will never solve a problem by thinking in the same plain in which the problem was conceived.” 

    Or put more simply, this:

    We need a new way to think about problems, because we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. Einstein quote
    Solving problems requires a new way of thinking. Sometimes the old way is the cause. This from brainyquotes captures the idea pretty well.

    In order to give someone a new way to think about a problem, you must first determine how they are currently thinking about it. Ask questions, get responses. Keep probing. Often, this process is helpful in itself. Allowing a person to think through and voice their own views may uncover areas of speculation, or error, or confusion. 

    Taking this approach provides the chance at self-discovery for the one with the problem. And I wish I had a dollar for every time some entrenched internal narrative has been the crux of the matter anyway. Poor thinking in will always equal poor thinking out. Your job is to help change the thinking patterns.

    Oftentimes we can’t see the solutions to our problems because we’re just too close to them. Our vision is obscured the way a person’s vision of the sun is blocked if he holds his hand too close to his eyes. Rationality diminishes in direct proportion to the engagement the emotions. Throw in stress, and cognitive function rapidly diminishes.

    This is why finding a new way to think about the problem often requires a sympathetic, objective adviser. That’s you. If you can resist providing a quick fix long enough to be an empathetic sounding board, you might give the other person not only your solution for this one problem, but a new way to approach all future problems as well.