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Comment by oneepic | Hacker News Reader

Related anecdote: I've always found that I'm able to make clearer judgments about situations, when someone else is going through them. It's much harder when I'm the subject of the story.

I guess the difference is that your mental context is so much more developed when you're thinking about yourself (not in the 3rd person). You have skin in the game, maybe it's that you're worried about the outcome of the situation, or it's just stressing you out, or you're thinking about how it will affect your friends/family/the rest of your life. So when you view it from an outsider's perspective, and throw away all that mental "noise", you have a clearer head and can make better decisions with the long-term in mind.

Alternatively, if you're going through something, you could try imagining someone else in the same situation (make up someone if you have to) -- What advice would you give to them? Then use that advice for yourself.

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Definitely agree. A couple of mental models I sometimes adopt to look at my situation more objectively:

* Thinking about what I would do as a parent if my child was in the same situation as I am

* View myself as a video game character (in the 3rd person, looking from above), and thinking about what I would do if I was controlling this character in a game with the same rules as life

Those are fantastic little self-hacks - thank you for sharing.

Currently looking down on myself and my advice to my games avatar is stop using HN and go to bed.

I do a slightly different version of it. Where I imagine how someone I deeply admire would advise me in this situation. This kind of detachment allows me to say hard stuff to myself.

I'm pretty reckless in video games...

Still, both are good ways to reframe things though.

This is actually a great example of transference and is a fantastic tool for understanding yourself in a deeper way.

In many ways, the advice you are giving is a means of your own subconscious communicating with your conscious awareness. If you really pay attention to the advice you give/the way the person's own situation makes you feel, it also gives you a greater awareness of your own thoughts and feelings towards your own situation and unresolved issues.

Vice versa, the advice that others give to you offers a view into their inner conflicts, baggage, etc. It is a fascinating phenomenon.

What an interesting reconfiguration -- or extension? -- of the Golden Rule: "Do unto yourself as you would do unto others."

Or maybe something more modern:

"Act as you'd have others act." "Do what you'd have others do."

Edit: Or the slightly less generous, "Do as you'd have another do."

I wrote my memoir in the third person for just this reason.

When faced with a difficult problem one trick is to ask how you would view your choice in hindsight a year later. I use that technique a lot and find it helpful. It seems as if there are many ways to attain objectivity about decisions, which casts doubt on the notion that illeism has any special magic.

Moreover, the argument that speaking in 3rd person made at least Caesar wiser seems doubtful. Caesar's writings are historically interesting but also considered artful propaganda hidden under apparently plain speech. [1] There's no particular reason to infer that Caesar used this device otherwise. As transmitted by Sallust, he referred directly to himself ("magna mihi copia est memorandi..."--"I find ample opportunity to mention...") when arguing against hastily putting conspirators of Cataline to death. [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commentarii_de_Bello_Gallico#M...

[2] http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/L/Roman/Texts/Sallust/Be...

100% agree, but as I get older, it's getting easier to put myself outside of the situation and think rationally. In my 20's and 30's, forget it. It was hard. 40's was hard, but easier. In my 50's, I've really hitting the sweet spot for us.

I've often wondered if I am unique in this, or whether other people follow the same pattern at the same age as me.

Confucius:

> At fifteen my heart was set on learning; at thirty I stood firm; at forty I had no more doubts; at fifty I knew the mandate of heaven; at sixty my ear was obedient; at seventy I could follow my heart’s desire without transgressing the norm.

One I have found helpful in a professional context is to think "If I were fired today, what would my replacement do about this?"

Sometimes, though, the answer is "run screaming out the front door and never be seen again. :P

You have to ask yourself those questions sometimes.

Staying in a toxic workplace because you have a mortgage, debts or a family to support could seem to an outsider like you've slipped into a Stockholm Syndrome-like mindset where you just don't want to think about it.

I wonder how many of us would do exactly that if we felt it was an option.

Are you a generally nice person? Then be nice and empathetic to your future self.

Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping.

Imagine someone you love and treat well. You need to treat yourself with the same respect. Take care of yourself, your room, your things, and have respect for yourself as if you’re a person with potential and is important to the people around you. -Jordan Peterson

Specially when it’s an emotional decision. Should I break up with do and so? Your friends might know the answer and told you the answer, but often times it’s difficult for us to see the answer ourselves.

Generally the same blind spots that get us into difficulties prevent us from seeing our way out of them, which is why most of the mistakes we see others making seem so trivial.

Letting go of my attachment to things troubling me helps. Sort of like stepping out of seeing things from my perspective and just as they are, as objectively as possible. I’m not perfect, but there are times where I did that and it helped.

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