Experiment - Elephant in Our Mind and the Moon

Today, I listened to the audiobook The Elephant in Our Mind: Uncovering the Truth Behind Our Actions, and it really got me thinking.

In Chapter Two, the author explores how we often weave stories about our choices, painting ourselves either as heroes or victims. This art of justification helps us align our past decisions with our present self. But here's the catch: these stories can distort the truth. One of the key concepts discussed is hindsight bias—a memory distortion that makes us believe we "knew it all along." In other words, based on what we know now, we tend to convince ourselves that we always saw the outcome coming.

What struck me the most is how the stories we tell ourselves are shaped by the lenses we choose to view events. We tend to justify our actions by looking at them through a particular filter—often influenced by current beliefs or emotions.

The author suggests an alternative approach: journaling the pivotal moments in our lives as they are, without any lens. This practice helps us create an honest, unbiased record of events, giving us a clearer, more objective view of decisions and their impacts.

This idea really resonated with me, and Sweety and I briefly discussed this in our conversations earlier today. I didn’t dive too deeply into it at first, but after some late-night chats (India late night and then followed by US late nights) —I began to reflect on everything we’d discussed. It hit me that I should journal our conversation, especially to see how our moods (mine, hers, and our shared mood) were influenced by external factors like the moon. It’s fascinating how something as subtle as the moon might impact our state of mind, and I wonder if journaling these moments could help uncover patterns in our emotions and decisions.

I’m curious to see how this experiment plays out—journaling our moods and conversations could provide a clearer perspective on how external forces shape our experiences, and maybe even help us avoid the biases that cloud our understanding of the past.