Wednesday, April 1, 2009

5 Ways You Lie To Yourself

Cracked.com has a great article about 5 malfunctioning thoughts that could potentially be screwing us over on a day to day basis. I have to say, I can relate to almost all 5 things listed. You should take some time to read the whole article here.

Here's an excerpt:

#5 Historian's Fallacy
You'll Hear it As:
"Hey I heard Lisa tried to stab you! You should have known that ho was crazy!"


How It Screws Us:
Remember that time you decided to jump off your roof and do a back flip into your little brother's kiddie pool? Remember how all your friends thought it was a great idea and it was going to be so cool? And do you remember when you regained consciousness three months later in the hospital, how suddenly they all laughed at you and said you should have known better? Congratulations, you were bitch-slapped by the Historian's Fallacy.


The problem is, there is something about our brains that just won't let us put ourselves in the other guy's shoes. We're the fat guy on the couch screaming about how LeBron James "choked" because he took that bad shot instead of driving the lane. We're all convinced that, had we been in the same situation, we would have made the right decision; the Titanic wouldn't have sank, the stock market wouldn't have crashed and the PlayStation 3 wouldn't have been priced at $599.

The moment we see their mistake in hindsight, we tell ourselves what morons they must have been. The problem, of course, is that when your reaction is to shake your head, laugh and call them dumbasses, it keeps you from learning from their mistakes.

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