[ignoramous]

Well, that was quite something.

> The funny thing here is that I'm 100% aware that our stories are wrong. Our own stories, doubly so. We back-fit narratives. Our minds rewrite what we remember ourselves thinking at the time.

What are some ways to break out of this mode, and look back upon the timeline for what it was? robfitz wrote 'The Mom Test', so they must know!?

> So our stories are wrong. But they still matter.

I guess cognitive dissonance is how most of us are keeping our world-view intact. Especially when you realise that nothing really matters in the grand scheme of things [1].

[1] https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/4iC9Qi3y9q8

[Benjammer]

>What are some ways to break out of this mode

I would guess the best answer here is to write down everything. Keep a journal. Write down events as soon after they happen as possible, write down your thoughts about the event, write down your emotions and connect them to the events that generate them.

I think a somewhat decent mental model here is to think of our brains as write-only memory. Every time you remember something, your brain rewrites the memory. You, on some level, are experiencing the event/thought/feeling again. When you think about what you felt during a past event, you are mostly feeling your current reaction to the memory, and not as much tapping into past feelings as you might think.

One broad example of this is what people call "type 2 fun." This describes events that may not produce positive emotions in the moment, usually some kind of hard physical tasks/achievements. But, looking back, these events produce positive emotions when remembering the event and the accomplishment.

[DougN7]

I always thought this happened because we don’t remember pain which is nice.

[bckr]

> type 2 fun

Great comment, and this phrase is going in my pocket.

> write-only memory

Could this be The Secret(tm) to transmuting base lead into gold? Rewriting the very memories that make up one's life.

[Benjammer]

For anyone else who isn't familiar, type 1 fun is where it's a fun experience and you have fun memories of it. Type 2 is a not-fun experience where you look back on the accomplishment fondly. Type 3 "fun" is a tongue-in-cheek description of something where you didn't have fun doing it, and also don't have fond memories of it.

[jrumbut]

Is there not a type for things that were fun to do at the time but are unhappy memories?

I have a few of those ;)

[datavirtue]

Team building events: type 3.

[datavirtue]

Ah yes, the suffering of Krav Maga...and the joy of it being done and remembered.

[robfitz]

I don't have a proper answer (because it's a good and difficult question), but I sort of think of it as a context-dependant thing.

E.g., During a customer interview where I'm trying to understand what they've done (and predict what they'll do), I have vanishingly low confidence in their self-predicted behavior. So I prefer to try to look at what they've actually done in the past, talk to them to understand why they did it that way instead of some other way, tease out the invisible data (like what they tried or researched but didn't continue with), and then come to my own conclusion about how that's all likely to extrapolate.

But in terms of understanding and ascribing purpose to my experiences? Or understanding and empathizing with a friend or stranger? Or sending a message out into the world in a way that can stick and spread? In that case, it's kind of a subjective thing to start with, and it's all about the stories. (To clarify: not intentionally fanciful or fictional stories. Just "stories" in the sense of how we tie all these things that happen into something coherent and ordered.)

That was kind of a non-answer, and I'm sorry I can't be more helpful. I only understand a very, very small number of things. (Three, I think, although I'm working hard on understanding the fourth.) Apart from those few narrow domains, I'm just fumbling through it like everybody else.

[beaconstudios]

Journalling. If you keep a record of your thoughts and feelings you can always go back and review them.

I've been working on some personal issues for a little while now and sometimes it's hard to tell where I've made progress due to this exact retroactive-perspective-shifting, until I go back and read my journal from those earlier times and the contrast becomes clear.