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b_b  ·  4077 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: How To Make Your Own Luck

    Even the choices you do make consciously are heavily influenced by automatic patterns. Researchers have found that our conscious mind is better understood as an explainer of our actions, not the cause of them. Instead of triggering the action itself, our consciousness tries to explain why we took the action after the fact, with varying degrees of success. This means that even the choices we do appear to make intentionally are at least somewhat influenced by unconscious patterns.

    Given this, what you do every day is best seen as an iceberg, with a small fraction of conscious decision sitting atop a much larger foundation of habits and behaviors.

This may be true, but it's an instance of when recognition can instantly change the behavior pattern. That is, an alcoholic can't get over his alcoholism until he realizes that he has a problem. In a more general way, we can't hope to change unconscious behavior until we become conscious of it, which may be difficult but isn't necessarily impossible. This, of course, is mainly possible through self reflection and introspection, two qualities in which most people are severely lacking.

    Every creative endeavor, from writing a book to designing a brand to launching a company, follows what’s known as an Uncertainty Curve. The beginning of a project is defined by maximum freedom, very little constraint, and high levels of uncertainty.

This is true, but also can be far more generalized, so that we can drop the word "creative". Everything follows this pattern (Einstein's light cone, in physics parlance). Without uncertainly, life would not be all that interesting. Uncertainty is what makes hope, the ultimate human emotion, possible.