Self-distancing can help you make better decisions

This reminded me of something which made it to the front page a while back about how people came to a different result when they considered Trolley Problems in their second language rather than their first.

But that article framed it as there being benefits to both the emotional approach and the more rational approach, depending on the problem being considered. This one seemed to discount the emotional baggage as totally unnecessary.

Edit: found the article, and now I'm not sure that I read it on HN after all, but for anyone curious (text is in Spanish): https://elpais.com/elpais/2018/06/18/laboratorio_de_felicida...

>Self-distancing is the act of increasing the distance from your own egocentric perspective when assessing events and emotions that you experience.

It's odd that there's no mention of meditation as a way to achieve this effect, since that's arguably its biggest benefit.

Put another way, as someone once said: Wisdom is the ability to take your own advice.

I always imagine myself in a movie. What would I want the protagonist to do? Usually leads me to be more outgoing and not staying at home.

This is really a powerful and understudied phenom that's very well exemplified in a very simple form of advice I once read concerning making decisions, self assessment:

Instead of thinking "what should I do in the situation?", consider "what advice would I give myself in this situation?"

It's almost a trivial differentiation, and yet, if one applies this concept immediately for any reason big or small, one will be astonished at how the answers are different. It's really amazing.

It's hard to put data behind it, but if you just try it, I suggest you'll probably see a difference as well. I can't think of any other psychological technique which yields 'results' (at least in terms of having different ideas given framing) for basically zero effort or practice. It's not even a 'learned skill', it's just framing. It's amazing.

I suggest more intellectual people, who might be more deep in their own thoughts, might make even better use of this than more gregarious 'in the moment' people who's attention is in the 'here and now'.

> self who is analyzing the event is considered to be distinct from the self who experienced it

I have hard time following this, how can there be two selfs in a single mind.

Is the observer more nobler entity with higher self restraint than the entity being observed who is more emotional and lower self control?