Conventional Wisdom vs. Contrarian Thinking

I feel at somewhat of a disadvantage as I write this blog because I know that a lot of what I write about flies in the face of conventional and comfortable wisdom. That means that I might find it harder either to get people’s attention in the first place or else to persuade people effectively because they might well have a lot of in-built resistance and skepticism that I don’t succeed in overcoming through logic alone. I can understand that as most of us would rather not face up to the fact that we’ve been doing things badly/ineffectively/misguidedly for years as that feels humiliating and when so many other people are in the same boat it becomes an easy defence to go with the crowd. I myself adopted the same approach for years and I especially found it very hard to face up to my own inadequacies. However, my desire to find the natural, robust, ‘default’ methods and underlying understanding to get things done in the most effective and pragmatic ways that I can discover has ultimately forced me to reconsider much about conventional ideas and about myself.

I have long had a contrarian nature whereby I consider the opposing argument/idea/assumptions as I have often found this a useful way of getting a balanced appraisal of a situation and, more importantly, of finding alternative (and often better) solutions. I don’t indulge in contrarian thinking out of bloody-minded stubbornness, ego or a ‘desire to be different’. I do so to find better solutions.

For me, a beautiful solution is one that understands the cause of a problem to such an extent that it eliminates it entirely so that the symptoms and the response to symptoms simply disappear. That, to me, is a problem permanently solved. Not all problems can be permanently solved, for example, to solve the problem of needing to eat daily I have to look at the cause – the needs of my living body. That’s a cause that I’m not willing to remove! Instead I focus on effective solutions so that satisfying that particular need becomes easy and routine.

I read a lot of posts on forums about people interested in self-development and in overcoming their personal problems. Their problems are very common and much of the responses and advice just bandies about conventional wisdom on the subject. My take on this is that if conventional wisdom worked then it would remove the cause of problems either entirely or to such an extent that the symptoms would either disappear completely or be reduced to such an extent that they would no longer prove a major distraction. The fact that this doesn’t happen suggests to me that conventional wisdom is usually deeply flawed. It can offer temporary relief from the effects of symptoms but it rarely, if ever, removes the cause so that the symptom and the need for relief completely disappear.

In my life, I struggled for years to get my head straight so that I wouldn’t continue to end up thwarted by symptoms of deeper problems and my responses to them – either bad behaviors or a never ending attempt to hold them back. The occasional periods of feeling good, balanced and highly productive paled almost into insignificance compared to the periods spent reeling around in response to the symptoms of my problems. I became more and more despondent, more and more despairing and less and less able to rise up and get on with creating a fulfilling life. It got to a point where I either had to just give up and accept a limited and frustrated life or else I had to find better solutions. Mercifully, I ended up pursuing the latter course.

One of the first things I did was to recognize that conventional goal-setting was doing me no favors at all. It took a level of boldness to suggest that goal-setting doesn’t work in the face of so many of the great and the good that promote it but I really had all the results to show that it doesn’t work for me and that different processes that I follow get the kind of results that I want in life with much less turmoil. I decided to take a scientific approach and derive theories and methods based upon the evidence at hand and the causes for those results. You can read my conclusions in this article: pinnacle-goal-setting-doesnt-work

Once I convinced myself that it was a good thing to challenge conventional wisdom I kept going with pretty much every perpetual symptom and response to symptoms that I realized caused me to spend so much of my time in fruitless efforts. That eventually led to me understanding the root cause of so much of my mental struggle and the negative emotions that I consistently felt. That led to the creation of a theory that you can read about here: how-to-operate-your-brain-perfectly-v10.pdf

Whilst these ideas and theories fly in the face of conventional wisdom I only promote them because they fit the evidence and the results and hence can explain the causes of problems. With that understanding, different approaches to thinking can occur, which either eliminate the problem or else allow much better methods for dealing with the symptoms to be derived.

Thus, if you feel skeptical about what I write I fully understand but I would ask you to search for the cause and effect relationships and to see if the ideas that I promote come up with better solutions. I mean significantly better solutions of the sort that either eliminate the problem entirely or reduce the symptoms so greatly that dealing with them becomes routinely quick and easy to do so that we don’t have to divert masses of time, energy and focused thought on them any longer. This will challenge you to give up some cherished ideas and beliefs but ask yourself this: What is more important to you – defending your beliefs and methods so that you don’t ‘look wrong’ or finding the methods and systems that properly allow you to fulfill your desires? If you are into defense then you won’t like my ideas. If you seek better answers then keep on reading.

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