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To be quite honest, I’m not sure what to make of this book thus far. On one hand, the information is interesting – about the way that our mind operates and the difference between System 1 and System 2 thinking. On the other hand, I can’t help but resent the density of the reading, despite the fact that we were warned about it beforehand. To be honest, I still can’t quite tell what the point of this book is. I’m pretty sure that it’s not simply to explain a difference between two systems, but I can’t really see where it is heading at the moment.

Nonetheless, I was still able to get a lot out of this first section of reading in the book. In many ways, it reminds me of my reflection on a reading from my yoga class that I blogged about last week in the way that it provoked self-reflection and difficult reconsiderations about my personality and being. In particular, I was struck by the way that the description of System 1 thinking helped me understand the reason that I am having difficulty adjusting mentally in the early stages of a new relationship.

System 1 thinking “operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control” (20). On the other hand, System 2 allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it… The operations of System 2 are often associated with the subjective experience of agency, choice, and concentration” (21).

Something that I am beginning to realize is that much of my approach to relationships is engrained in System 1 thinking. That is, I have had many bad experiences with relationships over the past few years – people who have been mildly to severely disrespectful, poor communicators, or simply not as invested as I was. I have become so used to this, that I truly feel that those things have become part of my automatic thinking in regards to relationships; at the first sign of any issue, I fling myself into a downward spiral and assume that these processes will repeat themselves. It forces me to overreact and treat the individual I am currently with disrespectfully, which is something he truly doesn’t deserve.

However, I guess this reading also gave me a little bit of hope – with some interjection and intervention from System 2, I can overcome these pitfalls and have a fighting chance of overcoming System 1 so that I don’t self-implode and ruin the relationship based off of past experience and the lazy thought processes that have come as a result of my past interactions.

I’m still a little wary though because after reading this section of our reading, I have come to understand something I knew before even more deeply – that it is extremely difficult to change these patterns, inclinations and mental short cuts that are a part of System 1. I think that that is why this reading was actually so difficult for me to get into, because I understood that it was so closely reflecting the difficulty I have been having in my own life. Time and time again, I think to myself that I need to change my habits, that my thought process and mental approach to relationships is off kilter as a result of bad past experiences.

As such, I am hoping that the next few chapters give some practical advice on how to get our System 2’s to intervene on our behalf and stop our System 1’s from screwing us over. At the moment, I am not completely satisfied with what I am getting out of the book, but I have faith that I will get more out of it as time goes on.