All that I have written here tries to lay out successes that I have had and things I have done to gain that success. I just wanted to have a go to string of related posts that people can read and implement. Today, I will lay out the mechanics of the inner workings that lead to a successful mindset needed to operate in such a way that you will see what is a good idea and what is insane. Follow the good and reasonable person and listen to what they say. Insanity is covered below.
What is Reason.
I am not going to look up the definition. To me, reason is the ability to weigh out reliable information by testing what works and what fails. Act on what works
When there is a failure, there is always a reason for why it failed. Let's break all of that down in a very general and factual manner. What kind of mindset brings success? If doing something in a certain manner fails, would you attempt to handle it the same way next time? If so, you may be an failing in the area of reason. There is a difference between someone who cannot be reasoned with (they do not know reasoning) and someone who is unreasonable when it comes to known bad ideas. I will be talking more about how to tell the difference in this post.
Knowns and Variables
Life is a busy process. I have lived a half century on this planet and the laws of physics have not changed as technology has developed over the decades. Human nature has not changed. People gravitate towards pleasure and avoid pain. Their motivations are pretty simple. That said, I am noticing changes that are occurring in certain areas of life that do not make any sense. I usually follow things that make sense and copy the actions of successful people (people who have tried and tried with many failures, learning lessons from each of their failures). That is called the ground work for success.
I also deal in facts and results. In any situation, we have "Knowns" and "Variables" to consider when trying to find the answers to problems that need to be solved while heading toward a goal. I am not talking about problems that arise as consequences of wrong-think. Things are always changing, but the knowns (things we know to be true and reliable) always operate the same way. That is true of each individual we deal with or each company we regularly deal with and some investment avenues. A known can be something that works or it can also be a regularly occurring problem.
Problem
A problem is something out of the ordinary that impacts the normal health, business operations, household management, investment strategy, or whatever situation or realm you are involved in. Before you can identify a problem, you must first define what is (or should be) normal. You can use statistics from a reliable source or personal experience. I am talking about those pesky failures mentioned above.
Experience
Everything comes down to experience. People react and operate on what experiences they have based on decisions made that caused difficulties, then trial and error to avoid hard times in the future. It all comes down to reviewing past experiences and making better decisions in the future, thus avoiding what caused those difficulties.
Let's talk about the least experienced people. Children are born with zero experience and they learn by trial and error as they are hit with consequences for their actions on an hourly basis every day. They learn quickly that some things they do will not fly. They want to do things on their own but kids do not have enough experience, in general, so they try everything. They cannot define problems until they unknowingly create some problems for themselves. They are gaining experience. When things go south, they rely on their parents to assess the situation and fix it for them. Parents have more experience and can solve the problems quickly. Then the child can go back to playing.
Experience is nothing more than a collection of memories that build themselves into a mental list of knowns (things you know to be true) along with another mental list of normal variables. The more experience one has, the more easily that person can avoid undesired consequences, otherwise known as problems.
Someone I respect once said, "Chalk it up to experience" after one of my failures. That eludes to another mental list which a lot of UPs (covered below) tend to routinely forget or bury in a vault somewhere in their psyche, but the wise will keep that list as badges they have won in order to level up on the game of success.
You can tell a lot about a persons intelligence when a problem arises in a collaborative group and many people begin to voice their opinion on how to go about solving it. The more experienced individual can listen to all the ideas and easily see who has and who has not learned this or that from their experiences in life. Maybe some have not had experience related to the problem at hand. Still, that more experienced person in the group will readily voice his assessment of each idea and explain why he believes x, y or z will not work.
The less experienced in the group are anxious to try their solution and ridicule the MEP (more experienced person), rather than valuing his experience or "know how". The LEP (less experience person) will say that the MEP "doesn't want to try my idea", but maybe the MEP has tried it in the past and has a known stored on his mental list. The MEP does not want to watch that same idea fail again. Picking through the crowd and finding out which ones are MEPs and which are claiming to know the correct path is a bit of a challenge but you can tell who is who by keeping track of which person has a reliable track record for successful problem resolution.
The Hard Way
Let's say that the above situation arises in a work scenario and the boss is on board with the an idea one of the LEPs had. The whole group will now be forced to experience the likely failure. They were all forced to learn what not to do, or in other words, they learned the hard way. Then they end up going with the idea that the MEP had. On occasion, the MEP is hated for being right about what to do in that situation. Hopefully, the boss is a MEP and the above does not happen.
The Unteachable
Sometimes, being proven wrong (proven to be inexperienced) causes resentment among the group and that resentment might even cause the whole group to choose the hard way over and over in order to spite the MEP. If it were a person rather then a group, I would call him an UP (an unteachable person) but in our example, we are dealing with an office filled with UPs.
Insanity
Einstein allegedly said, "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them." That statement then morphed into the more common adage, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." UPs like to do things this way.
Unfortunately, the learned of our society have to watch the rest of society bumble their way through life in total insanity. I blame the school system for not teaching that failure (if done only once with a lesson learned) is a very good thing. Our teachers have no experience or are not willing to share the things that they have learned. If the latter, this is some sort of cruel joke that has been perpetrated against our children.
Reputation
Reputation is either positive or negative and there are some who fail to consider a person's reputation when choosing a mentor, or even when choosing the idea that someone has for handling a situation. Instead, they consider the way the person speaks, dresses, or how popular they are. I suggest you keep one more mental list of who has had more ideas that panned out well. Notice the successes of others and rather than resenting that person, keep an eye on what he is doing and how each action turns out. Then, if possible, ask questions and learn what you can from them.
People who know how to reason, described above, are the first to be called unreasonable. They are so because they only want to do what works, but you will find that they are very reasonable if you present an idea that they have not tried. You will be welcomed to give it a try. That is called presenting a new idea and these MEPs are always willing to risk something new in order to gain more experience. I am one of those and I wrote this because you may have missed out on these principles in school or even in your life.
Surround yourself with MEPs if you can find any around you. Make learning a way of life and you cannot fail. Change your attitude about failure and keep your risk limited when there are very few knowns or when you are unfamiliar with known variables related to something you are considering. In addition to that, ask a lot of questions when you identify a MEP in your midst. Having one of them as your friend is like having a cheat code to life!