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Why We Ignore the Obvious: The Psychology of Willful Blindness. By Maria Popova How to counter the gradual narrowing of our horizons.

Why We Ignore the Obvious: The Psychology of Willful Blindness

“Keep your baby eyes (which are the eyes of genius) on what we don’t know,” pioneering investigative journalist Lincoln Steffens wrote in a beautiful 1926 letter of life-advice to his baby son. And yet the folly of the human condition is precisely that we can’t know what we don’t know — as E.F. Schumacher elegantly put it in his guide for the perplexed, “everything can be seen directly except the eye through which we see.”

The Book of Symbols: Carl Jung’s Catalog of the Unconscious. By Kirstin Butler Why Sarah Palin identifies with the grizzly bear, or what the unconscious knows but doesn’t reveal.

The Book of Symbols: Carl Jung’s Catalog of the Unconscious

A primary method for making sense of the world is by interpreting its symbols. Picasso on Intuition, How Creativity Works, and Where Ideas Come From. By Maria Popova “To know what you’re going to draw, you have to begin drawing.”

Picasso on Intuition, How Creativity Works, and Where Ideas Come From

“Inspiration is for amateurs — the rest of us just show up and get to work,” painter Chuck Close memorably scoffed. “Show up, show up, show up,” novelist Isabelle Allende echoed in her advice to aspiring writers, “and after a while the muse shows up, too.” Legendary composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky put it similarly in an 1878 letter to his benefactress: “A self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood.” Picasso on Intuition, How Creativity Works, and Where Ideas Come From. Do You Procrastinate? Maybe It's A Form Of Wisdom. Procrastination can make us feel guilty, unproductive, riddled with failure.

Do You Procrastinate? Maybe It's A Form Of Wisdom

You know what it feels like and how it looks: Just one more round of checking social media. A spontaneous Netflix marathon. That closet that suddenly really needs to be organized. Michael Shermer: Why people believe weird things. 3 Ways to Access Everyday Intuition. Many of us are raised to believe that logic is the best way to make a decision; weighing the pros and cons back and forth.

3 Ways to Access Everyday Intuition

The truth is “Life is Illogical.” We plan for A and B happens, we get upset and disappointed, because somehow we believe we have control over how each step goes, especially when we mapped it out so logically. The One Thing That Changes All Relationships. ~ Freya Watson. We live in a vibrational world, where similar vibrations attract.

The One Thing That Changes All Relationships. ~ Freya Watson

“I was going through a tough patch in my relationship. It felt as if I was carrying everything myself, with my partner just not being there to support me… Being ‘self-aware,’ I thought I had reflected on myself sufficiently (a dangerous assumption to make!). I had looked at the situation from all angles, wondered what I was projecting onto my partner, wondered what I need to look at myself—but I still kept feeling let down and unsupported.

Eventually, one day, the frustration hit a particular low, and I let all the unspoken feelings and criticisms come tumbling out—and it turned out to be the key that unlocked the door to understanding. The Science of “Intuition” Should you trust your first impression? - Peter Mende-Siedlecki. Social psychology is a branch of psychology focused on the scientific study of how people think about and relate to one another.

Should you trust your first impression? - Peter Mende-Siedlecki

One of the core research areas within social psychology concerns the question of how we learn about and evaluate other people based on their behavior. Expanding on the theories of early pioneers like Solomon Asch, Fritz Heider, and Harold Kelley, social psychologists have identified consistent patterns that govern how form stable impressions of the people around us. For instance, research suggests that when learning about a person’s moral character, bad behavior weighs more heavily on our impressions than good behavior. How Our Minds Mislead Us: The Marvels and Flaws of Our Intuition. By Maria Popova “The confidence people have in their beliefs is not a measure of the quality of evidence but of the coherence of the story that the mind has managed to construct.”

How Our Minds Mislead Us: The Marvels and Flaws of Our Intuition

Every year, intellectual impresario and Edge editor John Brockman summons some of our era’s greatest thinkers and unleashes them on one provocative question, whether it’s the single most elegant theory of how the world works or the best way to enhance our cognitive toolkit. This year, he sets out on the most ambitious quest yet, a meta-exploration of thought itself: Thinking: The New Science of Decision-Making, Problem-Solving, and Prediction (public library) collects short essays and lecture adaptations from such celebrated and wide-ranging (though not in gender) minds as Daniel Dennett, Jonathan Haidt, Dan Gilbert, and Timothy Wilson, covering subjects as diverse as morality, essentialism, and the adolescent brain. Freud’s Life and Legacy, in a Comic. By Maria Popova “You have to listen carefully.

Freud’s Life and Legacy, in a Comic

The unconscious mind is crafty.” A Developmental Tour of the Imagination: What Children's Use of Metaphor Reveals about the Mind. By Maria Popova “Metaphorical thinking … is essential to how we communicate, learn, discover, and invent.” “Children help us to mediate between the ideal and the real,” MoMA’s Juliet Kinchin wrote in her fascinating design history of childhood . Indeed, children have a penchant for disarming clarity and experience reality in ways profoundly different from adults , in the process illuminating the workings of our own minds.

The 13 Best Psychology and Philosophy Books of 2013. By Maria Popova.

The 13 Best Psychology and Philosophy Books of 2013

Pioneering Scientist Rachel Carson on Wonder, Parenting, and Why It’s More Vital to Feel than to Know. Einstein, Anne Lamott, and Steve Jobs on Intuition vs. Rationality. How To Actually Hear What Your Intuition's Telling You. When I talk about intuition, I’m referring to that sense of knowing something without being able to explain why or even how you know it. It’s connecting with that feeling deep inside that tells you when something is right for you right now or when it’s not.

Sometimes your intuition might whisper. Sometimes it might scream. It's not a premonition or a psychic experience. It isn’t about going with what's most pleasant or pleasurable in the short term. So how can you access your intuition? 1. This may sound obvious, but so many of us forget. 2. Our bodies are amazing tools to help guide our decisions.