On Misperception

All of the improvement I've talked about so far are action improvements. They're about things like optimizing free time and messing with risk reward. All of the millennium goals, save one, are about doing something, or doing something better. Even the patience one is about gaining the ability to sit still, not the mind to do it. There's only one millennium goal directly related to how I think, the one about emotional hypersensitivity. I think this is a huge shame. It's generally much easier to improve ourselves physically and professionally than mentally. But mental improvement is the absolute core of self growth. Without the ability to change our perceptions, we can't truly say we've become better people.

We're human. That has a lot of meaning behind it, but there's only one I'm concerned with right now: flawed. To be human means to be imperfect in countless numbers of ways, from our failing bodies to our holes in our knowledge. But by far the worst flaws are the ones where we see the world in a wrong way. A few ways immediately leap to mind: racism, homeopathism, theism/atheism to atheists/theists, etcetera. More subtle are the ones that don't define a mode of thought but hide in the cracks of our interactions. If I miss a day of training I've failed. Only a genius can write a program. I don't have the time to learn this thing. I'm spineless. I am set in my ways.

What makes these so terrible is how hard they are to fix. First of all, you have to notice them. Finding a flaw in your perception is like needing to fix a car that you don't know is broken. The flaw is just another part of how you deal with the world. Unless something huge happens to you or you spend a lot of time introspecting, you'll never realize you have it. Writing that short list was incredibly difficult for that reason. I just couldn't think of possible flaws in perception. They were there, certainly in me and certainly in others, but they're almost invisible.

Then you have to realize it's a flaw. It was only recently that I learned to "loosen up" with my training regimen. I used to think that if I didn't run for a day, I failed at exercising. That would lead to me just giving up and abandoning my work. I didn't think this was a problem, though. I was holding myself to a high standard, where the price of failure was so great that I should never even consider missing a day. But now I think that part of working hard at something is to be adaptable. I am not defined by what I do or don't do. I can be a runner without running, a writer who doesn't write, even a physicist without physics. Rather it's a mode of thought and focus, not the act of doing those things but the will and desire to do them. I am not a runner because I run. I run because I'm a runner. And this means that even if I don't run for a day, I'm still a runner. My former perception of "fail once fail forever" was invalid, to be replaced with "a miss is a blip on the radar."

((Incidentally, I'm staying up late to write this, so instead of exercising in the early morning I'll just jog and lift after my class today. Adaptability means keeping the ritual while allowing yourself to break free of the routine.))

Finally, and perhaps worst of all, you have to know that you can change a perception. This may very well be the hardest part. A lot of them are self inhibiting. Say you think you lack willpower or patience. Will you have the willpower to build patience and the patience to build willpower? Not until you stop thinking you lack them. Catch twenty-two. We never change, and so we live our forlorn lives. We stay angry and hurt and petty and down, never once truly believing that we can make ourselves better.

Is there an easy way to change perception? I wish there was. The question is pretty much the same as: is there a fast track to becoming a better person? The past 4000 years of theology say 'no'. And I'm not gonna argue with the Buddha. We have to try, though. If we want to really improve as people and not just pick up new skills and tricks, we have to change our perceptions. It's a slow and agonizing process, one from which I've often strayed away. But I keep coming back. There's no other way.

My past few posts have been small ramblings on the metagame, so I figure it's time to talk about where I currently am. Two of the millennium goals are completed, and I'm working on five more. The photography and Spanish ones have unfortunately fallen by the wayside, and I'm not putting as much time into anaerobics as I should. But still, they're coming along! I'm confident that I'll have at least five more of the short term ones done by winter. That's only two terrible movies I have to watch. I'm gonna restart the Spanish effort this week, maybe reserve the photography one for a winter-break reading marathon. It's one of the goals that can be completed in a very short intense time, unlike the steady pace ones I'm currently doing.

I think I've hit my limit. What are your thoughts on misperception? Can you think of any powerful ones people don't notice? How do you work on changing them?