A couple of years back I had a client in the States a scientist type by training whose work had at times been to help others expand their thinking to help them think about their thinking to help them think in new ways beyond what they’d been used to. You could say that this person was the thinking persons thinker. A very intelligent, very ‘mentally’ creative person.
As with all clients at that time I needed to know what was happening in someone’s life to be able to make an evaluation of what is going on before I’d start looking for ’causes’ never mind of dealing with them.
That was the deal . . .
So my clients e-mail me or tell me by phone and over time I build up a ‘knowledge’ base of each client and their issues as we work with various means to resolve them.
As with most clients during the ‘issue understanding phase’ we’d talk directly and with this particular client this happened on average maybe 2-3 times a week. Most times this person like other clients would describe events, situations or circumstances that had been encountered since our last chat.
Except for one interesting point. This client ALWAYS had a very rational and logical explanation for everything they described. So when my other clients would say;
- “So that’s what’s been going on . . . ANY IDEAS?” . . . or . . .
- “What do you think?” . . . or . . .
- “What might be causing that?” . . .
Not this client . . .
That’s a bit strange don’t you think?
Someone whom made the choice to work with me to identify and resolve ‘life’ issues and 49 times out of 50 they tell me what has been happening in their life but they ALWAYS have a ready made explanation for ‘whatever’ is happening.
Not only that BUT these explanations strangely enough ALWAYS seem to explain what is happening in terms of others behaviour or some ‘healing’ process or ‘whatever’ but very rarely in terms of themselves.
I do have an entire series on this site explaining the massive bias that there is against anyone that is:
- Determinedly personally orientating toward difficult issues . . . while also . . .
- Seriously trying to explore what is responsible for them by engaging with yourself AND you inner states, feelings and perceptions . . .
The series describing some of these concerted sabotages starts on this page here although, I also had plenty of information on my clients web site with examples of these problems and advice and strategies to help my clients do this . . .
So, for a ‘thinking’ orientated client with access to plenty of information warning them of self exploration biases, distractions and put off’s it was seriously odd that their explanations are ALWAYS very much a diversion AWAY from themselves and their own issues AND despite the abundance of information they have on these areas they don’t seem to be aware or engaged with any of it.
You could perhaps describe this as confirmation bias at an extreme.
The other VERY perturbing thing is that how they explain what has been going on is done with a deep and palpable sense of certainty and assuredness that culminates at the explanations end with an air of satisfaction, certainty and pride.
There is never a “what do you think” open question mark at the end. Rather there is an attitude of;
“WOW I got that in one. There isn’t much I cannot figure out”
In other words there is automatically ZERO openness about ‘other’ possibilities.
Great assuredness and certainty of one’s own explanations actually kills DEAD consideration of other possibilities because there is not even a conceptual opening for anything else to arise.
So, it shouldn’t take a genius to understand that great assuredness and palpable certainty of your explanations would make it exceedingly unlikely that you would consider possibilities or explanations beyond what you confidently ‘think’ are already correct.
So, for you reading this have a think about the following possibilities . . .
What if your thinking is being managed and your own ‘assured’ explanations are being fed to yourself?
Even worse what if any sense of certainty or feelings of confidence of your own deductions and explanations are being managed too?
What if your thinking, understanding and explanations and even your reactions to what you are reading HERE NOW are being pre-defined and fed to yourself?
What if your feelings and thoughts and assuredness about how good your own evaluations are about what I present here are THEMSELVES being managed . . .
. . . how would you know?
What is happening with regards your thinking NOW that is at odds with being able to openly consider possibilities beyond any ‘taken for granted’ set of assumptions or understandings?