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by sdwr 1059 days ago
Interesting how you say "geek", because this is definitely the geek approach (this information is "out there" to be learned) vs the nerd approach (building mastery over the subject).

Emotions are about other people, and about social positioning. Traditional self-help gets away with murder when it talks about "exploring your emotions" as a personal thing. "Exploring your emotions" really means acting on other people, which you illustrated well.

2 comments

> Emotions are about other people, and about social positioning

That's... one way to put it for sure.

Emotions can teach you about yourself: what you like/dislike, what actions you are likely to take after a trigger, how you respond if others act a certain way (as you mention), what situations are more/less likely to impact you in different ways, etc.

Understanding what you feel will help you become a better thinker. We're constantly being tugged around by our mind and emotions are a big part of that push/pull. We think we're rational but most of our mind does not work that way and has subtle ways to nudge us.

This can be an exploration about yourself exclusively if you make it so. You could climb a mountain to avoid contact with other human beings and still learn about yourself by paying attention to your emotions.

...how do you plan to "master" something you don't understand and aren't curious about?
Nice try, geek!

In all seriousness, I believe that mastery is a learnable, transferrable skill. Knowing what improving feels like, what stagnating feels like, how much complexity to load on, finding the experts...

There is nothing nerdier than meta-