Curtis Cunningham on technology, music, dogs, and life.

This is a little snippet from an interesting article. One bit in particular struck me as pretty wise. It’s based on this diagram ..

From: Scott H Young » The Power of Humility: Why Confidence is Overrated

“.. separating all information into three broad categories. The things you know that make you positive, the things you know that make you negative, and the things you don’t know.

Confidence would come from focusing on the positive things you already know. In contrast, humility isn’t focusing on the negative information as it is focused on the overwhelming amount of information you don’t know.

There are three ways you can view the problem* ..

• Confident - I’ll be great. I’ve done similar ventures before and kicked ass in all of them. Yay
• Insecure - I’ll do horrible. My grade school teacher said I would never amount to anything. Boo hoo.
• Humble - This is completely new to me and there is still a lot of information I have to learn. Hmmm… “

[*could be replaced with 'world' in my opinion]

For me, this diagram really highlights that an overabundance of confidence or negativity really comes from “unskilful thinking”. This is a term I’ve heard a number of times listening to some great podcasts by Ajahn Brahm from the Buddhist Society of Western Australia . Their site has a huge archive of excellent thought provoking and free podcasts.. I can’t recommend it highly enough. I typically use the itunes store podcast library to get them onto my ipod.

Ajahn Brahm has used the term “unskilful thinking” when describing depression.. which seems like it would be harsh for a depressed person to hear, but when you focus on that diagram it’s clear to see what what he means.

My understanding of focusing on “the now”, is that this is a core buddhist technique (e.g. meditation). This focus really opens you up and makes you more receptive to input, i.e. all the stuff you don’t know, which the diagram above highlights as the biggest part of anything.

By the way I’m under no delusion I have any of this stuff mastered. It’s only when I’m out of the fog of a down day or my own hype of an up day and resting somewhere in the middle, that I’m able to see this stuff clearly. On bad days I try and focus on this stuff to bring me closer to the middle. Sometimes it works, sometimes it takes a while longer