Learning for ourselves

Describing ourselves on paper, while blindly attempting to live up to the expectations of others, makes it all feel like a giant lie.

We’re the experts on ourselves, right? So why do we find it so difficult to convey who we are in text?

1.  We’re writing to seek the approval of othe...

Introspection is blind to construction. This does not mean that our introspective guesses are never accurate, just as you might guess the correct answer to a multiple-choice question.

When you don’t know the actual facts about yourself, your consciousness pieces together a compelling stor...

Secretly, you don’t want to do it; you just think you should want to do it. You value it for the wrong reasons. If you’re only coming up with extrinsic reasons for your activity or goal, you may decide that it’s not worth pursuing.

How to outsmart it: Think of your intrinsic r...