"Mental fluidity," "mental flexibility," or "cognitive flexibility" seem like better terms.
Creedoplasticity? Pisteuoplasticity?
Mental Liquidity
21–30 of 123 posts
Re: Mental Liquidity
#22One of the biggest beliefs I keep struggling with is the need to be perfect. I've been jamming away for many many weekends on a side project that literally was done. I just kept adding tiny tweaks left and right, until I literally just now launched it ( https://amee.la ). Nothing ground breaking, and in the end nothing that needed to have so much perfectionism around. The belief of having to need something perfect is…
This has been a mental barrier for me as well. I’m not sure if it’s in the realm of belief or rather fear of failure. Personally more inclined to say it’s the latter.
I’d argue that the fear of failure still boils down to underlying beliefs about:
- What it actually means to fail
- That failure is inherently bad
- What will happen next after failure occurs
- What it says about me when fail
- What others will think about me when I fail
- That I can’t recover from failure
etc.
If you grow up hearing that failure is bad/wrong/implies something about you as a person, it might never occur to you that another framing is that life is a series of experiments, and failure can be one of the best ways to zero in on success (in some cases, this may be the only possible way).
As far as I can tell, it’s beliefs all the way down, and adjusting certain beliefs can fundamentally transform experience relative to all downstream implications of that belief.
Re: Mental Liquidity
#23One of the biggest beliefs I keep struggling with is the need to be perfect. I've been jamming away for many many weekends on a side project that literally was done. I just kept adding tiny tweaks left and right, until I literally just now launched it ( https://amee.la ). Nothing ground breaking, and in the end nothing that needed to have so much perfectionism around. The belief of having to need something perfect is…
If you actually shipped the extra weeks was probably worthwhile. My side project effort can be measured in decades with little real progress yet. I really think this year might see some movement.
Re: Mental Liquidity
#24The prerequisite for "mental liquidity" is articulated by Aristotle: "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." If you entertain the thought, this gives you the chance to try out a new belief network. If you find your belief network would be strengthened by its inclusion, then you adopt it. Otherwise, you reject it. In this way, ones interconnected set of beliefs grows monotonically stronger. And this is right and good.
EDIT: got downvoted! I would love love love to know why! Not offended, just curious.
Re: Mental Liquidity
#25I've heard it also said "strong opinions, weakly held". Unlike "mental liquidity", it doesn't require explanation.
Re: Mental Liquidity
#26Perhaps unexpectedly, I find that thoughtful engagement with religion (Judaism in my case) has helped me become much more liquid on other topics. When you accept on faith a handful of principles that deal with an unknowable domain, it becomes much easier to be less attached to the other stuff.
> I find that thoughtful engagement with religion (Judaism in my case)
I've heard Judaism characterized as very accepting of discourse and reinterpretation of itself. Does this strike you as accurate? If so, it sounds like a kind of mental liquidity...
> When you accept on faith a handful of principles that deal with an unknowable domain
Sounds like mathematics, in which practitioners become used to both the process of relying on a set of axioms and selecting them for the purposes of exploring or constraining systems, which makes one aware that there's a certain degree of choice or even potentially arbitrariness to it...
Re: Mental Liquidity
#27The prerequisite for "mental liquidity" is articulated by Aristotle: "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." If you entertain the thought, this gives you the chance to try out a new belief network. If you find your belief network would be strengthened by its inclusion, then you adopt it. Otherwise, you reject it. In this way, ones interconnected set of beliefs grow…
[flagged]
Re: Mental Liquidity
#28> A question I love to ask people is, “What have you changed your mind about in the last decade?” I use “decade” because it pushes you into thinking about big things, not who you think will win the Super Bowl.
This is a great question. And "decade" is a good time frame not only because of size but because it's a long enough time frame there's a better chance people will have good answers.
The Dee Hock quotes (“A belief is not dangerous until it turns absolute” and “We are built with an almost infinite capacity to believe things because the beliefs are advantageous for us to hold, rather than because they are even remotely related to the truth”) are great too.
Re: Mental Liquidity
#29The prerequisite for "mental liquidity" is articulated by Aristotle: "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." If you entertain the thought, this gives you the chance to try out a new belief network. If you find your belief network would be strengthened by its inclusion, then you adopt it. Otherwise, you reject it. In this way, ones interconnected set of beliefs grow…
[flagged]
That seems a bit trite. I was thinking it was a misclick, but hopefully whoever did it will chime in, and they will NOT themselves get down-voted, whatever their reason.
Re: Mental Liquidity
#30The prerequisite for "mental liquidity" is articulated by Aristotle: "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." If you entertain the thought, this gives you the chance to try out a new belief network. If you find your belief network would be strengthened by its inclusion, then you adopt it. Otherwise, you reject it. In this way, ones interconnected set of beliefs grow…
“One can not learn what one thinks one already knows”
—Epictetus