Why You Accept Conventional Wisdom
You like easy.
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They said if you want to master a skill you have to practice it for 10,000 hours.
They said if you want to build a new habit you have to do it for 30 days straight.
They said if you want a high paying job you have to go to college.
They said a human couldn’t run a mile in under 4 minutes.
People believe this stuff and it sticks.
This knowledge gets passed along and passed down to new generations.
This information is conventional wisdom.
We accept and believe it true because it comes from an authority.
And it sounds believable.
But why do we believe this stuff when we have evidence proving the opposite?
The 10,000 rule has proved to be wrong.
We found out you can build a habit in less than 30 days if you use a reward system.
We found out you don’t need a degree to land a high paying job.
We found out people can run a mile in under 4 minutes.
Economist John Kenneth Galbraith said in The Affluent Society we associate truth with convenience.
Based on what John said we accept conventional wisdom because it’s easy. We find comfort in knowing something is easy and simple.
That’s why you accept conventional wisdom.
You like easy. We all like easy.
Easy is fun.
But easy isn’t always good.
It’s time for us to make a change and not accept the truth because it’s easy.
We need to accept the truth because it’s the truth.
This means temporarily suspending our current beliefs about what we know and looking for evidence that proves us wrong.
It begins by asking, What makes this statement true?
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