4 Psychological Skills I Desperately Want People to Learn

These are the ones that have had a significant impact on my life.

Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash

A surefire way to grow your intelligence is to go meta.

This is to say that you should try to understand how your mind works. That is why I spend a lot of time reading psychology. After all, my goal as a writer is to raise human consciousness, first of my own and then of my readers.

To that end, yesterday, I asked myself a question. “What are the few psychological skills that have had a massive impact on my life, and I desperately want people to learn them?” I came up with a dozen. And in this article, I want to discuss four of them. Excited? Let’s dive in then.

#1. Indirect Flaw-Finding

It’s no secret that an individual’s flaws are not too obvious to him, even if they might be to the world. This happens because when it comes to thinking about how we’re lacking, our ego prevents us from drawing an accurate picture. That is why self-awareness is a skill that not many are able to master.

Yet, while it’s really hard to look at our own flaws, it’s effortless to find someone else’s flaws. If I ask you to tell me how you’re flawed, you’d have to think a lot before coming up with an answer, if you even could. But if I ask you to tell me how your friends, parents, spouse, colleagues, or boss are flawed, you’d have the answers for me in a minute.

I found a way to channelize this bias to build greater self-awareness. This is how it works.

I pick a person around me and ask myself how they’re flawed. Given our judgemental brains, I find an answer within seconds. And then, I try to find instances in my own life that I act in the same flawed manner.

For instance, I’ll ask myself, “What’s a major flaw in my friend X?.” Then an answer pops up. “Oh, he’s a terrible listener.” Then, instead of asking whether or not I have this flaw, I tell myself that I do have this flaw. And I try to find instances to support my argument. Naturally, when I think deeply about it, I find instances when I’m a bad listener — and I try to think about how I can correct my flaws.

This works on two principles:

• If you directly ask yourself what flaws you have — a process we’ll call direct flaw finding — you won’t get accurate answers because your ego will intervene. Hence, we try to find flaws in someone else — because that’s much easier, and it is something we do on a daily basis anyway.
• Second, after finding the flaw, we’re trying to hold a mirror onto ourselves. But if we ask whether or not I have this flaw, our ego might intervene again, and the answer will be no. Hence, instead, we assume that we do have this flaw — and try to support the argument against our ego, but for greater self-awareness.

What I have realized is — whatever flaw I find in someone else — I have that flaw too. Maybe not as extreme as other people’s, but to some extent, yes, I do have that flaw.

• If I think that someone else exudes a lot of negative energy, I know that I exude some negativity, too, at least at times.
• If I think someone is a terrible listener, I know that there’s room for work on my listening skills too.
• If I think that someone brags about themselves all day long, I know that I sometimes engage in bragging too — and I can work on that.

Try it out yourself. Find a flaw in someone else. Assume you’re flawed in the same way. Try to support your argument. This will yield greater self-awareness. And then work on your flaws — and emerge a better human.

#2. The Baby Swap Stimulation

This, as the name suggests, is a weird thought experiment. But it is truly very, very important. Let me elaborate.

People are who they are for a reason. As a person grows up, his life is moulded by his environment. The people around him shape his ideologies. The experiences life throws at him play a role too. Simply put, the present moment of any human is heavily influenced by his past.

Duh! So obvious! Well, it might be obvious in theory; however, it’s not so obvious in practice.

Because when we judge people, we don’t consider this at all. We judge their present moment — with our present thinking — without taking into consideration their past.

Hence, whenever I find myself judging someone, I ask myself:

“If I was swapped with this person when I was a baby, wouldn’t I grow up to be exactly who he/she is?”

I call this the ‘Baby Swap Stimulation.’ The idea here is to internalize the fact that people are who they for a reason. If you were swapped a baby with someone and were subjected to the same people and the same experiences as them throughout your life, you’d grow up to be exactly who they are. If that is true, how does judging others make sense?

This helps me stop judging others. Because it’s not fair that I judge others when I haven’t even walked a mile in their shoes, let alone the entire journey.

#3. ‘I’ Focused Asymmetric Strictness

The universe is divided. For me, it’s me v/s everyone else. And for you, it’s you v/s everyone else. What’s important to understand here is that you can only control your actions, not other people's. This, too, sounds obvious in theory. But very hard to practice in reality.

Most of us follow a different kind of asymmetric strictness, where we want everyone else to be on their best behaviour, but we’re incredibly lenient with ourselves. This leads to frustration. Because well, we cannot control others. ‘I’ focussed asymmetric strictness, on the other hand, is about being strict with yourself, but not so much with others.

• When someone is late to a meeting, let it go easily. Don’t hold it against them for being unpunctual. But you try to be the most punctual person you know.
• When someone — let’s say your employee — doesn’t complete the task you ask him to, forgive easily. But you, try to be the most reliable person you know.

This is not to say to be ignorant to what kind of people surround you. No. Surround yourself with punctual, reliable, and responsible people. But the point I’m trying to make is that you should be, as the Stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius said, tolerant with others and strict with yourself.

#4. Understanding How Our Emotions Correspond to Others’

A while ago, I came up with the cross-table of joy and sorrow. This is what it looks like.

The cross table of joy and sorrow.

• Envy, as we all know, is to be sad when someone else is succeeding or is happy.
• Schadenfreude, the sister of envy, is to be happy in someone else’s suffering.
• Empathy, the opposite of envy, is to share someone else’s suffering.
• Mudita, a Buddhist concept, is to be happy when someone else is happy.

It’s essential that we learn to move from envy and schadenfreude towards empathy and Mudita. But before we do that, we must try to audit our feelings and understand where we are right now.

For instance, after the latest American elections, many people were happy. But I think most people were more joyous because of Trump losing than Biden winning. People were joyous. Sure. But the Schadenfreude joy might have been more than Mudita joy.

Hence, audit your feelings and understand how they correspond to other people’s emotions. And then try to move towards empathy and Mudita. Here are a few principles that might help you do that.

• Abundance: This belief promotes that there’s no shortage of success and happiness in the world. It means that when someone accomplishes something, they’re not taking it out of your bucket. Adopting this belief can let you conquer envy.
• Recognize your own hurt: Thich Nhat Hanh said, “When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over.” Use this quote for higher self-awareness. If you’re not able to empathize with people when they’re suffering or be happy for them when they’re succeeding, it might be possible that you’re hurt, and your hurt is taking ugly outlets.
• Tap into your own memories of suffering. I like to believe I’m above-average at empathy. This, I think is because I’ve suffered a lot in my past. Not in a material way. But psychologically. And when I think about how horrible I felt when I was at my lowest, I just think of those times as something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. You, too, tap into your own suffering. You know how horrible it feels. Remember that there are several people around you who feel like that on a daily basis. This will help you be more empathetic for them.
• Practice. Like other skills, Mudita and empathy need practice too. So start putting in the reps. If you look carefully enough, you’ll find plenty of opportunities to practice.

To Sum Up

Spending time to understand how your mind works is a smart move. The mind is a complex maze, all the subtleties of which will never be truly conquered by humanity. That’s why there’s always room to grow. There’s always something new to learn. Here are some psychological skills that I have learned in my life that I desperately want you to learn.

• Indirect flaw-finding. Find a flaw in someone else. Assume you have that flaw too. Find points to support your argument. Develop greater self-awareness. Try to find a way to fix your flaws. Emerge a better human.
• The baby swap stimulation. Whenever you find yourself judging someone, ask yourself, “Wouldn’t I be the exact same person if I was swapped with this person as a baby?” This will help you realize that judgment doesn’t make sense because you haven’t even walked a mile in that person’s shoes, let alone the entire journey.
• ‘I’ focused asymmetric strictness. Most people want others to be on their best behaviour but are pretty lenient with themselves. Be the opposite. Be strict with yourself and tolerant of others.
• Understand how your emotions correspond to other people’s emotions. Do this by trying to classify your emotions into envy, schadenfreude, empathy, and Mudita.