Self, Other Focused

As we watch our behavior throughout the day, and the outside world comes in through our senses, we can start to notice how our opinions and our intentions get molded. For me, what that is really like surprises me.

It seems as though there are two places to look for the answer to a question: within myself, our outside myself. In this way I will say I am either self-focused or other-focused. Looking within myself means I have confidence in myself. Looking outside myself means I feel fear, and am seeking a way out of that fear. I don’t logically consider all the available options outside of myself when I’m other-focused, it’s more of a haphazard groping for some answer that will get me to stop feeling so anxious and afraid.

Being self-focused, on the other hand, is a calm, inward introspection. It doesn’t necessarily mean there’s no fear or anxiety, but it does mean that I’m not trying to get rid of the fear and anxiety outside of myself. It means that I trust myself and my decisions, and, importantly, that I understand that I’m living with the consequences.

An other-focused mindset is not skeptical. It offloads the important mental work of discerning accurate from inaccurate information–truth from non-truth. We humans can be really good at making decisions once we know the truth and see it clearly, the struggle that we have is identifying just what that is in any given situation.

When you meet with a doctor who recommends a course of treatment, your lack of skepticism may cost you years off your life, it may cost you a limb. When you converse with a spouse about the best school for your child, your lack of skepticism may lead you to make a big mistake for your family–for example spending a few hundred thousand on a private high school when the public one down the street may have better outcomes.

When you work with coworkers who are boisterous and adamant about how going on xxx vacation or having xxx job title did so much for them, your lack of skepticism may cause you to lose your way, and ruin your opportunity for happiness in this very moment.

For me, my default is other-focused, and it takes mindful concentration throughout the day to catch myself, and to observe the thought that comes in trying to convince you to blindly comply with the other and simply not identify with it. It requires a peculiar balance of humility and confidence, whereby you hold open the possibility of them being right and having right ideas without committing in any direction, and always knowing that this bias to be other-focused exists within you.

Again for me, I don’t think being other-focused is any way I want to live. I live with the consequences of my decisions, and the people around me live with them as well. I ought to be the one to make them.