The Dangers of Thinking Too Much; And Thinking Too Little

thinking about ourselves our feelings our past our desires in our hopes is a hugely tricky task that most of us spend a good deal of effort trying very hard to avoid we keep away from ourselves because so much of what we could discover threatens to be painful we might find that we were in the background deeply furious with and resentful about certain people we were only meant to love we might discover how much ground there was to feel inadequate and guilty on account of the many errors and misjudgments we've made we might find that though we wanted to be decent law-abiding people we harbored fantasies that went in appalling ly deviant and of errant directions we might recognize how much was nauseatingly compromised and needed to be changed about our relationships and our careers we don't only have a lot to hide we are a liars of genius it is part of the human tragedy that we are such natural self deceivers our techniques are multiple and close to invisible to our worth focusing on in particular our habit of thinking too much and our habit of thinking too little when we think too much in essence we're filling our minds with impressive ideas which blatantly announce our intelligence to the world but subtly ensure we won't have much room left to rediscover long distant feelings of ignorance or confusion upon which the development of our personalities may nevertheless rest we perhaps right dense books on the role of government bonds in the Napoleonic Wars or publish extensively on Chaucer's influence on the mid 19th century Japanese novel we secure degrees from Institutes of Advanced Study or positions on editorial boards of scientific journals our minds are crammed with arcane data we can wittily inform a dining table of guests who wrote the entirety on epictetus or the life and times of dogging the founder of Zen Buddhism but we don't remember very much at all about how life was long ago back in the old house when father left the mother stopped smiling and our trust broke in pieces we deploy knowledge and ideas that carry enormous prestige to stand guard against the emergence of more humble but essential knowledge from our emotional past we bury our personal stories beneath an avalanche of expertise the possibility of a deeply consequential intimate inquiry is deliberately left to seem feeble and superfluous next to the supposedly grander task of addressing a conference on political strategies of Dona Maria the first or the lifecycle of the Indonesian octopus we lean on the glamour of being learn it to make sure we won't need to learn too much that hurts then there is our habit of thinking too little here we pretend that we are simpler than we actually are and that too much psychology might be nonsense and fuss about nothing we lean on a version of robust common sense to ward off intimations of our own awkward complexity we imply that not thinking very much is at base evidence of a superior kind of intelligence in company we deploy Bluff strategies of ridicule against more complicated accounts of human nature we sideline avenues of personal investigation as unduly fancy or weird implying that to lift the lid on inner life could never be fruitful or entirely respectable we use the practical mood of Monday morning 9:00 a.m. to ward off complex insights of 3:00 a.m. the previous night when the entire fabric of our existence came into question against the backdrop of a million stars spread like diamonds on a mantle of black velvet deploying an attitude of vigorous common sense we strive to make our moments of radical disquiet seem like aberrations rather than the central occasions of insight they might actually be we appeal to the understandable longing that our personalities be non tragic simple and easily comprehended so as to reject the stranger but more useful facts of our real intricate selves a defense of emotional honesty has nothing to do with high-minded morality it's ultimately cautionary and egoistic we need to tell ourselves a little bit more of the true because we pay too high a price for our lies through our self deceptions we cut ourselves off from possibilities of growth we shut off large portions of our minds and end up on creative tension and defensive while others around us have to suffer our irritability gloom manufactured cheerfulness or defensive rationalizations our neglect of the awkward sides of ourselves buckles our very being emerging as insomnia or impotence stuttering or depression revenge for all the thoughts we've been so careful not to have self-knowledge isn't a luxury so much as a precondition for a measure of sanity and inner comfort if you liked this film please subscribe to our channel and click the Bell icon to turn on notifications you

Channel: The School of Life

Views: 1,262,351

Keywords: the school of life, education, relationships, alain de botton, philosophy, self, improvement, wellness, mindfullness, psychology, hack, how to, school of life, overthinking, thinking too much, thinking too little, thinking, meditation, how to stop overthinking and anxiety, anxiety, how to stop overthinking, stop overthinking, PL-SELF, ne pas trop réfléchir, 不要过时, ओवरथिक करें मत, no pienses demasiado, não pense demais, nicht überdenken, لا تفوق, Entscheidung fällen, Toma de decisiones

Id: p5zLY3Wi8Uk

Length: 5min 30sec (330 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 21 2017