Generalizations: How Forgetting Them Can Lead to Wild Success

The human brain is designed to focus on one thing at a time and to ignore the details it doesn’t need. We call this process generalizing. If the human brain didn’t automatically generalize thoughts, it would take forever for anyone to accomplish anything.

Say we stop in at a local restaurant and eat a great meal. Once we finish, we then ask the below average waitress for the check, which she kindly returns with 9 minutes later. As she comes back asking for your signature to authorize the use of your credit card, you realize you don’t have a pen to sign the check with, so you ask her for one.

Now, there hundreds of pen types, each mixing and matching different features. Ball point, gel, blue, black, red, thick, thin, but you don’t have to describe each feature of the pen you want for even the slow waitress to understand because the brain automatically generalizes those features into what we call a pen. She simply reaches in her apron pocket and pulls out whatever pen she can grab.

What does this have to do with you?

Everything.

We generalize much more impactful things then pens. We generalize experiences and then we generalize ourselves.

The mind makes a generalization after just one experience. For example, say you went bowling once and you performed terribly. You not only threw gutterballs, but one time it went in the next lane. Your friends laughed at you and the people in the lane next to you got very agitated.

Your mind doesn’t wait for the next time you go bowling to make a decision on your ability, it instantly generalizes that you are not a good bowler. This isn’t a fair or accurate generalization but it is how our mind processes information.

Realize that many things we believe we aren’t good at are based on an unavoidable natural reflex called a generalization, which are often based on insufficient and incorrect information. Then forget them and realize that with one new piece of information, such as a good game in bowling, any generalization can be changed instantly.

Athletes often stop trying because it didn’t go right the first time and they think they are bad at it. Whatever “it” is. Change that generalization, do it again, and again, until you’ve literally changed your mind.

NB