The Overthinking Cure by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0000000000000
Published: 2021-11-25T15:55:48+00:00

Technique 1: Socratic Questioning

Cognitive biases are unconscious and unchallenged. Our work is to make them conscious and challenge them! One way to do this is to be curious and ask questions in the style of the famous philosopher Socrates, who used a simple technique to approach truth: the humble question. Here’s an example.

“All women are gold-diggers.”

“Really? What evidence do you have?”

“Well, there was Angela back in 1992 . . .”

“Do you have any other evidence?”

“Well, not direct evidence, no. But everyone knows women are like this.”

“Is that really true, though? Everyone? Is that a thought based on facts or more on your feelings?”

“Well, I guess it is based a little on my feelings.”

“Could you be viewing the situation in absolute terms when a more nuanced approach would be more realistic?”

“Okay, yes, maybe not all women are like that. Some are not, that’s true . . .”

And so on. Here, you refuse to take your own word for it and question every assumption and expectation. You ask, is this thought really true? Why do you think so? Is this rational? Where does this thought come from? Why? What are you not looking at? It sounds basic, but the fact is that many of us rush headlong into a belief without taking a second to ask whether we have any evidence for that belief.

Pretend you’re an alien with no preferences either way, and just become curious: what do you actually know here? What is fact and what is emotion? Are you making guesses or assumptions or unfounded inferences? Could you be misinterpreting the evidence somehow? Simply become curious about other ways you might interpret the situation, and how valid your current position is. Are you sticking to your story simply because you’ve always done so, from habit? Often, we carry on with a faulty thought because it confirms beliefs and conclusions we already have about ourselves.

Our inner narrative and self-talk can be so persistent we simply start to accept it. But the Socratic technique is about examining your own validity and perceptions from scratch. You want to encourage yourself to think more broadly, more deeply, and more rationally. In essence, you are using pointed questions to uncover your own biases, blind spots, and faulty logic. You’re not merely disagreeing with yourself for the fun of it but trying to challenge your own lazy or automatic thinking—after all, entertaining other possibilities is the only real way you can start to do things differently!

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