Thought I'm Wrestling With (Part 2): Can You Even Trust What You Say?
Why truth breaks down inside us and what it takes to actually live it
One of the core concepts I was wrestling with for my last article didn’t make the final cut as I felt it didn’t align with the narrative structure that it ended up taking. That said, I still wanted to explore it and give it the light of day as it is very much intertwined with the ‘truth’ I recently probed. Read on should you wish to continue your journey with the truth…
Before we go searching for truth in the world, we might want to examine how unreliable we are at expressing our own.
Essentially, I’ve grown increasingly curious on how certain trains of thought get verbalized. Not in the sense of like how does the brain notify the vocal cords to contract, but rather what sort of neuro-connections are firing that lead an individual to speak certain words. How are they arriving at an affirmative stance on a subject, and/or deriving their beliefs.
These questions surfaced for me as I have become increasingly introspective and curious on how I would answer certain questions if I was being interviewed. That is, I’ll ask myself the question “What is the most important thing for living a healthy life?” or “What is your favorite memory as a kid?”
At first these seem like ‘softball lob’ type questions that people could naturally answer. But from my experience, I don’t like the pressure of having to think of my answer on the spot. I want time for them to marinate before I really commit to an answer. With time I feel I’m able to give a more grounded answer that aligns with my truth.
This reflection comes as I’ve been on a bit of a podcast kick as of late, and I’m always so amazed at how eloquent and thoughtful the people I’m listening to sound when the host and/or guest asks them a question. It seems as if they always have an answer at the tip of their tongue, or worst case, take a brief second to collect their thoughts and then proceed to give a rather elaborate framework from which they decompose the question and still manifest intellect.
I tell myself, '“I couldn’t come up with that answer within a millisecond of it being asked.” And my ‘ego’ concludes that podcasting just wouldn’t be right for me, and that maybe I should accept that my intellect is inferior to those I listen to.
This could very well be the case, but the longer I’ve sat with it, the more I’m convinced that maybe we are all just making shit up on the fly. It’s not to say that people don’t have coherent thoughts, or that experts in their fields can’t accurately explain the nature of their work, but rather acknowledging the peculiar nature of the human mind and the way it works.
Here’s an example:
A behavior pattern I’ve noticed with myself, and I can only assume it applies to others, is that when I’m engaged in conversation, I have a tendency to speak faster than I think. I’ll be rambling off some thought only to catch myself saying something I didn’t mean to say/don’t fully believe.
The conversation is engaging. You’re sparring ideas back and forth. Thoughts are just flowing, but then the connection from your brain to your mouth loses calibration and you all of the sudden utter something, fully comprehendible and logical to an outside observer, that you don’t stand behind. Something that, if you could time travel, you would most definitely go back and say differently.
It happens more than I would like. I’m not sure if it’s an attempt at trying to avoid awkward silence within conversation, to appear socially intelligent, or some other factor, but a force of some sort is at play contributing to mishaps I would rather not have.
The distinguishing aspect of this phenomenon, is that the other person has no realization that you said something you would want to take back. They are living in their own perception of reality, outside of that understanding. So they interpret what you are saying to them as your truth/advice.
And the crux of the problem stems from our tendency to not correct that very misperception within that conversation. We continue to converse along the constructed paradigm of thoughts that have been exchanged. We don’t retrace our steps and say “oh sorry, I’m not sure what possessed me to say that last bit, because what I actually meant to say is …” .
It’s rare that people publicly retract the words that come out of their mouths. I’m sure there is an element of evolutionary biology and sociology at play where its disadvantageous to be seen as ‘wishy washy’ or inconsistent in your ways. The tribe rather you be dependable, predictable, and stable. And so survival mechanism forged us into social behaviors that reduced conflict. Either way it happens, and it shapes how truth spreads between people.
I think we are doing our fellow humans a disservice neglecting to course correct our thoughts and philosophical alignment. Essentially truth is getting distorted at the point of expression, yet we build from it.
A truth from meditation practices that I also don’t think we should overlook is that: we don’t really know where our thoughts come from. We can’t turn them off. We can’t control them. And we certainly don’t know the next one that is going to pop into our head, or what we’ll be thinking tomorrow.
If the words we speak are downstream of this ambiguous process of neuro activity, how can we be so sure that anything we say is reasonable.
Now, that line of thinking is a bit extreme, I must add, but I mention it to highlight the very reality of being a human, and how that organ in-between your two ears is the most advanced piece of matter in this entire universe, while simultaneously being a runaway freight train.
There are ways to prevent the latter, don’t get me wrong. And a plethora of scientific explorations has granted us insights into ways we can enhance our focus, discipline, and states of mind. But never forget the capability of the brain.
Let’s say you get asked a question. As the person is asking it you faintly notice a yellow school bus drive by over their right shoulder. You answer the question.
Who’s to say that by some cognitive butterfly effect your brain was influenced by that yellow school bus and thus the answer you give in that moment in time varies precisely because it did happen at that point in time.
This isn’t about “truth in the world.”
This is about the instability of our own expressed truth in real time.
On my podcast kick, author Mark Manson, who is a self-help writer and always investigating ways to change his perspective and mindset on things, was telling the host after rising to fame with a best seller his life slowly slipped away from him. It was on his book tour a few years later that he decided to go back and re-read the book to have some speaking points, and noticed he was living in contradiction to everything he wrote about.
I’ve experienced a very similar realization. I’ll be going about my life, encounter some obstacle. Do research. Implement a new approach/mindset. And potentially even write about it. Then a few years will go by and I’ll encounter that same obstacle, only to completely forget the approach I used. AND I WROTE AN ARTICLE ABOUT IT!
Think about that. We humans will encounter the world, overcome challenges, and yet still not necessarily have a clean reminder or recollection of tools that helped us in the struggle.
This makes me view the mind much more like a muscle than ever before. I believe there is a sort of equilibrium/homeostasis nature to the thoughts we have. As we learn something new, we train our brain. Much like doing a new weight routine will grow new muscles. But if you don’t consistently expose yourself to that line of thinking or apply your learning, the brain naturally atrophies that knowledge. Not completely of course, you’ll see that your relearning curve is quicker, but is still required nonetheless.
In our modern world of novelty, we constantly get bedazzled by the shiny new thing. Mark Manson says it’s hard to keep those fundamentals that you learn, and that you know work for you in front of your face because there’s so many distractions.
For years past, religion and other community activities served as the consistent reminders of practices, values, and mindsets to approach life. But the increasingly secular nature of our world has degraded those philosophical nudges.
The truth we want to live by must be constantly pursued and acknowledged. It’s easy to slip into a path of least resistance, and naturally settle into a prior state of ‘thought equilibrium’.
A recent test I’ve adopted myself is called the ‘shower test’. Comedian Jimmy Carr says you can tell what you care about by noticing what you think about in the shower. There are no other inputs or external influences shaping your thoughts. Just you and your thoughts.
For me, I sit there and recall the way in which I want to show up in the world, or work through something particularly challenging for me as of late. The former should stay consistent, but the latter should be changing. If I’m still dealing with reoccurring challenges weeks later, that’s a data point for me that says maybe I’m not being true to myself and actually trying to grow or learn from a situation.
Which is also the reminder that truth is hard. It’s not something you can be laissez faire about and expect to remain strong with. Living in truth requires constant resistance.
Not only is the truth hard to maintain between your ears, choosing to act on it is another layer of difficulty.
Sahil Bloom says “At the end of the day, you are the sum product of the actions that you take. Not your intentions. Not how you think of yourself as a human being. But by the actions you take.”
So often we have a good handle on what we want our truth to be, but the moment we are tested, we shrivel back inside our shell in the hopes that at a later time we’ll rise to the occasion. Sahil’s challenge to us is to try and live in alignment with how you see your ideal self showing up in the world.
In a conversation between Arthur Brooks and Sahil, Arthur made the comment that this proposal of living in alignment with your ideal self resembles Carl Jung’s interpretation of happiness. Jung believed that happiness was a result of people knowing what their values are, and live in a way that’s consistent with those values.
Thus, unhappiness can come from not knowing what you believe. Or knowing, but not living in alignment to that framework.
There is some component of “The Self'“, an inner psyche we have, that can sense attunement with our values. It might not be loud, but it can signal to us when we are drifting away from our truth if we slow down and listen for it.
Arthur’s second point to Sahil’s statement is that there is a Buddhist concept known as ‘right desire'. And essentially it gets to the notion that people want certain things, but want to want other things.
“First step that I recommend to a lot of people who are listening to us right now is don’t ask what do I want? Because that’s what the world is telling you to do. Ask what you wish you wanted. Your ideal self, the one grounded and knows what you wish you wanted, is not the person who’s giving in to her or his animal impulse, but rather to her or his moral ambition. That moral ambition is not what you want, it’s what you want to want. And that’s information that you need.”
They say the truth hurts.
The longer I interact with it, the more it earns that reputation.
There is no free lunch with it.
We are constantly in a battle to understand truth. To adopt truth. And finally to act on it. Fully manifest it.
Our animalistic human nature is a stable linchpin in preventing us from always living it. Just start small. One tiny action in the right direction is 100% more impactful than a big thought in any direction. Enough tiny actions, and over time a new equilibrium begins to take shape. One that brings your truth closer to your ideal self.