Some problems can’t be solved with more thinking - repost

Problems can feel overwhelming depending on our perceived gravity of them, which also depends on past experiences. Most overwhelming problems feel like that because they put us in contact with the feeling (or thought) of death, or social debacles. We tend to have a default inherent reaction to the arising of many modern problems, which tend to be less existentially risky than centuries ago: thinking. Thinking about solutions, ruminating about the past cause of the present conundrum, and wondering about what the future will look like in this scenario.

We suffer more in imagination than in reality, as Seneca would emphasize. Imagination is the cloud of self-directed thoughts transpiring in our minds. Those are a by-product of our personality traits, beliefs, and instilled behaviors we learned in the path of reality. You may not even notice their presence. And you often can’t recognize them because you identify with your thoughts, and you may fear spending time in a room alone because your own thoughts would hunt you. So, you numb the inherent pain of human existence by immersing yourself in external-focused activities that take some of your cognitive attention away from the present moment so that you don’t need to sit with your distorted thinking.

“There are more things … likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”

Seneca, On groundless fears

One potential downside of not inquiring within for a protracted period of time is that when a problem arises you can’t control your reactions. Your mind starts racing with thoughts faster than the French TGV. And you fall into a spiral of distorted thinking that may magnify the problem. As neuroscientist Sam Harris points out in the Waking Up app: some problems simply can’t be solved with more thinking. He makes the example of the man who is hit by a poisoned arrow. A doctor arrives to medicate the man. The man says: “'I won't have this arrow removed until I know whether the man who wounded me was a noble warrior, a priest, a merchant, or a worker, . . .’” All of that is taking cognitive and physical energy out of the man. Some problems can’t be solved with more thinking. They can be solved with less thinking, or maybe not solved at all.

Then there is the opposite side of the spectrum, that may stem from inquiring within too much and become too self-conscious of yourself that you are not able to function in your best ability as you wish you would in everyday situations. I talk about that in more details here.