Emotional Freedom Is as Simple as Changing the Way You Think
A little bit of philosophy goes a long way
Many people have heard of inductive reasoning. If you haven’t, you certainly still know it. We use it, unknowingly, every single day: we couldn’t live with out it. Unfortunately, we misuse inductive reasoning almost just as often. It causes an impressive amount of suffering.
Let me explain exactly what inductive reasoning is and how you can make a shift into living a more enjoyable life.
What is induction?
Induction is a form of logical reasoning which uses empirical data, data gathered from experience, to deliver a probabilistic conclusion. Unlike deductive reasoning, you can never be 100% sure of an inductive conclusion because of its reliance on real-world data. It is always possible that you are drawing your conclusion whilst missing contradictory data.
The classic example given here is that of a black swan.
In Europe there are only white swans, so, naturally, once people had seen the umpteenth white swan they inferred that all swans are white. It became a great shock to scientists at the tail of the seventeenth century when black swans were discovered in Australia.
Hence, the term ‘black swan’ is now shorthand for a highly influential and unanticipated event. Induction can go wrong.
Why do I need it?
There are other interesting attributes about induction that I will not get into here. My point in mentioning it is brought home by the Scottish philosopher David Hume who observed their psychological character. In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1777) Hume observes,
“If a body of like colour and consistence with that bread, which we have formerly eat[en], be presented to us, we make no scruple of repeating the experiment, and foresee, with certainty, like nourishment and support”.
I instantly reach the conclusion that eating bread will be more nourishing than trying to eat my computer. We cannot help but make these sorts of inferences, they are hard wired into us.
What’s the issue?
So what? I know I can eat bread, big deal. What is the ‘danger’ of this?
The danger rests in what I see as the dual nature of our inference-making abilities. For some things, like eating bread or inferring the sun will rise tomorrow morning, we are effortless and accurate in our reasoning. Indeed, we almost certainly do not even know we are applying reasoning to anything. It seems blindingly obvious.
Unfortunately we also frequently apply the method of induction in incorrect ways which can seriously diminish our lives. A lot of negative self-talk is like this. It cherry-picks a few instances of something bad happening and then says something to the effect of ‘see, look at all these times you failed, this is probably just going to keep happening so why even bother?’ This leads us to thinking we are fated to be a certain way, unaware of how unreasonable we are being.
This happened to me the other night. I had been feeling the urge to write a poem the previous night and nothing came of it. I thought ‘fine, no matter: I’ll sleep on it. The next day something will come’.
Well, the next day came but with frustration, not inspiration. As I was deep sunk into my inability to write a single decent line of poetry, this sort of debauched inference popped into my mind. In addition to yesterday, it picked out a slide-show of memories featuring the greatest hits of all the times I’ve struggled to make progress writing.
The memories rolled and I couldn’t help but think ‘see, writing has always been hard for you and it will always be hard for you’.
With this faux insight I lost view of two things:
- The information that contradicts this conclusion: all the times writing has been easeful and productive.
- How transitory this emotion of frustration is.
My inductive abilities broke down here because I was deceived by confirmation bias. My frustration had already made me feel I was a useless writer, and then I fetched information that justified that belief and allowed me to draw a conclusion that was completely unnecessary.
This is particularly insidious because it feels logical. It feels like I can point to all the reasons for my suffering, that some deeper reality is revealed. It isn’t.
Applying better reasoning to your life
How do I break this spell of negativity?
The key for me seems to be rooted in skepticism. This is because the hallmark of this type of flawed thinking is certainty.
When I felt I was a hopeless writer, I didn’t just think I was probably a hopeless writer: I thought there was nothing truer on earth than how mediocre I was a writing.
It was only when I decided to question this feeling of absolute certainty that I came to the realization that I was wrong.
When it comes down to it, we have a large blindspot for our own thinking and feeling. We rarely question our own motives, even rarer do we question our own beliefs. Though, all of us, to be sure, consider ourselves ‘open-minded’.
Maybe going forward we could use doubting ourselves a little bit more.
Remember: the goal isn’t to come away feeling like an idiot — we all act this way to a certain extent, it’s unavoidable — the goal is to be more aware so you can correct your course.
If you found this useful, please consider sharing. You can find me at www.joshuacronkhite.com
