Self Discovery is Learning

Nothing exists until it is discovered by you, there are no shortcuts.

The hand and the mind work together in the process of discovering the world, but this occurs in a social world, so what we think, what it might be possible to think, is socially moderated.

Everybody has this experience, but few people examine the world or themselves intensely enough to break new ground.

Most people never understand that they need to come to problems with their own data. Your own data you can TRUST, so when you use it, the risks for you are small. People without their own data are forced; to rely on hunches, and on what other people are saying.

I believe (without any documented evidence), that most people squander this knowledge, they waste it. They fail to examine themselves, what the world is really like, and how to learn from the events about them.

Taking the Trouble to Record Your Own Data

The production of Value

Value exists in a few critical ideas integrated into your life in a useful way. Value may most easily be found by correctly applying a pre-existing model, plan or idea like the Banting Diet. The task of making your diet really personal lies with you.

The most likely situation is to reach a plateau which is as far as you can go with today's knowledge. We all need to be constantly working on numerous improvement cycles or innovative projects.

The blockage of your progress, a reversal, a failure may give you the keys that unlock whatever health problems you may have been working on.

How do you inform yourself?

Your task is to inform yourself about things you would otherwise forget.

Your journal allows you to save the pieces of your life so it's possible to resolve your life puzzle.

Be an Accountant

Learn how to count and measure, and write down the result. Provide the data that you can come back to in a year or two, and check again for changes.

The Consequences of Error

Take down the structures in your life that prevent you from asking new question or better questions.

How do you prepare yourself for the possibility of being wrong?

Resolving Health Problems

The integration of all the ideas needed to understand a personal health issue takes time. You can't "make it happen" just because you need a result today. Integration is the result of living with a set of ideas in your memory, and your experience, until they modify themselves, and make sense of each other.

Knowing you've got a health problem does not automatically provide a solution. Nor is it possible to "buy solutions" to problems that involve your values, how you see yourself, or how you think.

The production of Value

You can't contract out your ability to think. Working on problems that interest you, collecting your own data, conducting real trials, or debates, or thought experiments, are essential tasks in developing your own thinking.

Your defense against the stupidity of others, your defense against bad professional advice, your defense against misinformation, that is the common currency of the news media, is your own data. Without your own data, you are likely to behave like a leaf in the wind. With your own data, you become like a tree firmly rooted, and able to stand against the wind.

Work with Other People

Regular meeting with a "mastermind group" is another way to examine what you are doing and to benefit from the ideas of other people. Join groups interested in the exploring the same areas. Nobody can do this work for you. Your ability to think is entirely in your own hands, either you develop it, or you don't. You will live with the choice you make.