Metacognition

Did you ever stop to think, and forget to start again

-Winnie the Pooh

You are what you think. 

External reality is separate. Thinking you’re Batman doesn’t make you Batman to others, but it does to you. What you spend your time thinking about defines your reality. 

Reshaping Worlds

Metacognition is what we spend our time thinking about. It affects prioritization, efficiency, competence, and discipline. What we do matters, but what we spend our time thinking about is just as important.

Most people’s thoughts go in loops. We admit, “I spent all weekend thinking about it!” Societies do it on a macro scale with movements like the Great Awakenings or the Red Scare. There are diminishing returns to consciously thinking about most problems for more than a short time. There's also an opportunity cost of that mental bandwidth. We could instead spend our time thinking about unique solutions to problems, ingesting new information, or refining our worldview. In order to have any unique thought, we need to dedicate time to it.

Our thoughts shape our world. The key to being dynamic is escaping loops to learn new things. To think different. When we master our metacognition, we can do things previously thought impossible like perform therapy on ourselves. We can reshape our world. 

Instead of following the same pattern over and over, you can stop it. It’s a superpower few have. It seems magical. Those who are disciplined can achieve it. 

In How to Be Rich, Paul Getty felt compelled to go buy a pack of cigarettes in the middle of the night. It was raining. He was going to have to put on clothes to walk to a store in the rain to get cigarettes. It was terribly inconvenient. He decided then to quit smoking. He stayed inside that night and never smoked again.

This sounds implausible to many. It makes sense when you understand the discipline he showed building his empire. Paul Getty was the wealthiest man in the world during his time from the companies he built.

Imagine that instead of going in circles, you spent that time thinking about different issues. Imagine how deep you could go into different problems to better understand how the world works.

Man in the Mirror

Controlling our conscious actions is the only way we can affect how the rest of our brain and body works. We need to first truly understand ourselves before trying to understand others. Start with the man in the mirror.

At the base layer, certain things are hard coded into how we act. They’re our unconscious actions. Many unconscious actions are in front of our face. What we say during a flowing conversation is unconscious. We aren’t consciously thinking about what we say before we say something. Other unconscious actions are so deeply embedded that we may not be aware of them. 

Then, we have the emotional brain. This affects how we feel. Above the emotional brain is the conscious brain. Our consciousness evolved for error correction. But more often than not, our conscious brain just rationalizes the actions of our other two brains. Most never go past the rationalization of defending our actions. It’s a shame.

The conscious brain is the only brain we have control over. The conscious brain can change the hard coded and emotional brain. But it takes work.

Dreams access our emotional brain and many dreams are attempting to reconcile our emotions. Pay attention.

Different types of meditation affect different brains. Mindfulness can change the hard coded and emotional parts. Visualizations and affirmations can affect the emotional part. Each of these work differently for different people.

Drugs are a shortcut that affect each of the brains differently. I’ve heard a number of doctors in the psychedelic therapy space say you can either meditate for ten years or take a tab of acid to get a snapshot. (Caveat being you should do it in a controlled environment with a licensed practitioner.)

Our brain is a prediction machine. Changing how our brain predicts requires work.