I'm basically skeptical of myself. I don't trust my hunches or knowledge much. More precisely, I always think they're insufficient.
Put positively, I have a sense for improvement; put otherwise, I lack confidence and a clear axis.
So when a problem shows up, my reflex is that solving it with my own thinking is a bad move — I immediately want to borrow outside wisdom (specialist knowledge).
On this blog too I've written several times about seeking knowledge outside myself — best practices, asking others, and so on.
And when I debate someone, or even argue, I often feel deep down: wait, maybe I'm the one who's wrong? — and end up accepting the other person's side for a moment.
That's especially true in private life.
Business, more or less, lets you judge right and wrong with some objectivity. In private life, personality weighs more, and what's valued is often less right/wrong than majority/minority.
As you know, I'm definitely twisted. In other words, a minority. (If people like me became the majority, the world would be in trouble.)
And I tend to think what the majority says is correct — "correct" in the sense of desirable, more than literal rightness.
Long ago, something sad happened.
Then too I accepted the other person's view — but afterward, thinking alone, I finally thought:
"What if I'm the one who's right?"
Looking back, that feeling seems like a breakthrough for me.
This isn't about stopping being skeptical of myself. It's that I'd always assumed the majority was right — and maybe that isn't so.
Until then I'd assume the other person was right first, then think through my own logic.
That time the starting point wasn't "assume they're right, therefore…" but "assume my thinking is right, therefore…"
It isn't a huge difference, and we still don't know who was right — so I want to focus on why I thought that then.
The point is: why then?
Only then was there something that let me feel with conviction, "My sense is more correct."
I think it was "day after day I'd stacked more correct things than the other person (the majority)." In short, my daily actions up to that point.
Imagine a game of stacking blocks as high as you can every day. Suppose I can stack twice as high as A.
Then A says, "Your stacking method is wrong. Even if you stacked higher than me, that way isn't correct."
But I can answer with confidence: "No — I've stacked this high with this method so far, so it isn't wrong."
Extend that a little and it may resemble what sports call "entering the zone."
The zone is that mid-game feeling where you can't imagine failing, or the opponent seems in slow motion.
You almost never hear it used for a weak player suddenly getting good mid-game. Entering the zone isn't sudden growth.
I think it's when bodily sense lines up with confidence in the correctness of the skill you've built so far.
That isn't mere positive thinking. Even if you try to feel confident, the sense doesn't catch up that easily.
Under some conditions, sense reaches a place that fully affirms you, catches up with thought, and you enter the zone.
So I think I may have been in the zone then.
It's ordinary to say, but nothing affirms you like stacking correct things day by day.
And more than anything, imagination that starts from "what if I'm right?" can travel much farther.
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