PERSPECTIVE: On Comparative Thought

Blog Article/Post Caveat (Read First Please: Click the Link)

This perspective is a thought exercise on how this can be applied to teaching, mentoring and leading those who would follow Sensei on the path of the Way of the Empty Hand. Take a look and if you derive some methodology that would make teaching better, leave a comment… Thanks!

“Temporal Comparative” thought: Tracking tangible and measurable performance improvements over time might increase the confidence of a person better than merely comparing oneself to our peers.

“Social psychologists have identified three main types of comparison that we make on a daily basis that provide context to our lives. These three are the counterfactual comparison, the social comparison, and the temporal comparison. The counterfactual comparison, as we have already seen, involves comparison between what was (or is) to what might have been. The social comparison involves the comparison of you to other people. The temporal comparison is between the way things are now to the way they used to be (or may one day become).”

Note: The martial artists all readily perceive the group of three in this analysis, i.e., like the concepts of shu-ha-ri and shin-gi-tai, etc. 

“A temporal comparison occurs when you compare yourself to how you used to be at some point in the past. AND five years is the approximate period of time that includes the current you. More than five years in the past, your previous self begins to feel more and more distant, less and less like the real you. AND social and temporal comparison, and discovered that as people describe themselves, they use temporal comparisons most. AND people's beliefs about their own behavior are not always accurate. AND suspect that social comparisons are actually the most common of all” 

NOTE: In regard to, “suspect that social comparisons are actually the most common of all,” that seems logical to my way of thinking simply because social collectives, the groups of people, family and others in the group, tend to be about human survival even in today’s perceived modern social order or constructs. 

"AND the human brain naturally and spontaneously seeks out three kinds of comparison information in order to make sense out of ongoing events and circumstances. AND Counterfactual, social, and temporal comparisons each represent a fundamental facet of the brains standard response to trouble. There are really just two main ways to react to a problem. Change the situation or change your mind. If you change the situation, it means you take active steps to fix the problem, and end up changing the objective situation for the better. If that doesn't work, you can just change your mind, re-construing the situation so that it seems not so bad after all. AND One [changing the mind] focuses on behavior and action, the other [changing the situation] on mind and emotion. AND upward comparison tends to be the starting point for fixing the actual situation, whereas the downward comparison tends to be the starting point for changing your mind about the situation. Upward comparisons spur us to action and betterment; downward comparisons console us."


More Notes from other Articles:

"the human brain seems to be perversely wired for relative judgments, even when the comparisons sabotage our well-being."

"while some comparative thinking may be automatic and irresistible, we may also have the cognitive wherewithal to choose comparisons that make us happier."



For reference and sources and professionals go here: Bibliography (Click the link)

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