logic
Logic. It’s the basis of moving from where we are to where we want to be. That, and the plasticity, or the ever-changing attribute of our beliefs and perspective.
Those who are successful in life put the principle of logic to good use. The principle of logic is the idea that we have the ability to think about our experiences, what happens around us, and our emotional reactions to what experience and the subsequent actions we take, and analyze them, the results we receive, and come to a new and better perspective over time that is of greater benefit and use to us.
In more metaphorical terms, the idea of logic is that we work making decisions mostly on autopilot, and that while it works most of the time, sometimes it sends us to the wrong destination. With our ability to see the cause and effect that led to a result, we have the ability to analyze and amend the instructions or programming for that autopilot to get us back on path.
Perspective Helps Us Decide
Our perspectives and our beliefs really are the central influence of our world. If you haven’t read the principle of perspective yet, now is a good time to do so. Our perspective is made up of many beliefs about the world, and those beliefs are often tied to evidence and memories, and influence us with emotional reactions to different actions we consider. Everything is this world is cause and effect. Everyone knows that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Our perspective and all of our beliefs, then, are the instruction manual that we’ve accumulated over time that helps to clue us in, based on prior experience, on what to do and how to react.
Indifference Helps Us Reflect
Our lives are only as good as the perspective and beliefs – the instruction set – that we’ve accumulated. The principle of indifference helps us to soften our innate predilection to always react, taking time to consider, especially when the emotional response is more intense and perhaps conflicted, whether or not our perspective and beliefs toward a specific situation are really working for us.
Logic Helps Us Amend
This indifference paves the way toward a moment of introspection, and that’s where logic comes into play. If we make most of our decisions emotionally, based on a belief of what’s best, the opposite is to make a decision logically, based on evidence of what will produce a desired outcome. Many times the logical response to something differs from our emotional response to something. It’s normal for our programming to be a bit off sometimes, and so approaching a situation with indifference, and then reasoning it out logically is often very helpful.
Breaking Down Logic
The principle of logic isn’t really a tool that we use as much as it is an awareness of how things work, that our beliefs are plastic and can be amended, and that what we see and experience can be traced back to those beliefs – our perspective – and our future can be made different and better by seeing the link between what we’re experiencing and feeling right now, and how what we think and hold to be true led us to that.
The real power is in logical analysis, and that’s what this principle of logic is all about. We can use analysis as a tool any time – in the moment, or at any other time in reflection – to trace our emotional reaction and the subsequent urges to react to our beliefs, to help us see how our perspective and beliefs are affecting our destiny, how and where we are stuck on an emotionally-driven autopilot in our decisions, and how we can overcome those default pathways.
Analyzing cause and effect is something that’s useful, but not something to overdo or get addicted to, unless you particularly enjoy seeing the mechanics of your life and your outcomes. In trying to better understand cause and effect in my life, I broke it down by looking at every single stage of the decision making process, thinking about what I was doing, and figuring out what was next. In doing so, I discovered something that I have coined the TEBEARA mechanism.
While it’s great sometimes to sit back and look at your beliefs and your perspective as a whole and pick and choose things to change and improve, it can take up a lot of time and be kind of random and somewhat ineffective if you’re focusing on things that don’t matter as much as others. That’s why I have found value in looking – through the TEBEARA effect – to find the things that are happening in your day that you’d like to change – instead of just random beliefs – and focusing on those.
The TEBEARA Mechanism
At the heart of this logical analysis of our world and our reactions to it is something I call the TEBEARA mechanism. It’s an acronym that stands for the steps that I have observed on how we interpret, react toward, and analyze our lives, the things we experience, and our reactions toward it.
Thought – Experience – Belief – Emotion – Action – Result – Analysis
Simply put, the chain of all results starts with an input; a thought or an experience.We either have a thought or idea pop into our minds, something we feel an urge to do something with, or we experience something that solicits a response from us. We then consider our beliefs, and our possible reactions, and weigh them against our beliefs in a kind of forum if you will, to get feedback in the form of an emotion we feel on what to do; based on our beliefs, we (most of the time) ultimately do what feels best. Sometimes we think things out logically, sometimes we delay action, but most of the time, we go with what seems and feels to be the best action. We then receive a result. We then analyze the result to see if it’s what we wanted, and look at how our beliefs, logic, and whatever else got us to that spot, and then go about internalizing the experience, creating new beliefs from it, and amending our beliefs in future to make better decisions.
The problem is that, for far too many of us, we short circuit when we don’t get what we want, and choose to believe that we did the right thing but it didn’t work out. The problem is that age old issue of ego telling us that it’s not our fault, it’s something or someone else’s fault. We don’t look at failure as an opportunity to try again and do it differently. The result is that we short circuit and TEBEARA becomes TEBEAR_.
Thought – Experience – Belief – Emotion – Action – Result – _________
We think a thought or have an idea pop into our minds, or we experience something, both of which are eliciting a response, we consider how to respond based on our experience and beliefs, we have an emotional reaction to the weighing of the responses, we take the best feeling action, and we get our result.
What I found is that our stagnancy and our predisposition toward homeostasis is due to the fact that we often short-circuit the effect. We get in a phase where we think that the effort or the method is the problem, and not the belief. We get into an effort mindset and just start doing, doing, doing. Sometimes it’s good to sit back and contemplate, instead.
While we might try something something different the next time and it might work, what we’re missing are the false or improper beliefs that led to an action that seemed like the right action. Instead of going back and looking at things and understanding why we were lead toward an action that didn’t work out, you know, so we could see what else might need fixing and amending so we could make better decisions in the future, we try something different to see, if by chance, that might work instead.
It’s not a problem to try new things, but it can be a problem when the right solution is conflicted by a belief that we hold onto very strongly that already influenced us before, and may influence us in an unhelpful manner again in the future.
The core concept contained in all of this is the idea that successful people are willing to look at their actions, see why things didn’t work from a mechanical point of view – to see what to change in the future – but to also understand the beliefs and experience and perspective that lead them emotionally to make that decision, and to be able to amend those beliefs. Don’t just change what you do, change what you think.