362 - Multi-Perspective Thinking: How to Make Better Decisions in 4 Steps

Do you approach a problem from only one perspective? Are there ways that you could expand your understanding and incorporate different perspectives? Today I want to talk about the power of multi-perspective thinking and how it can help you dig deeper into challenges in your life.

“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”

—Marcus Aurelius

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Transcript

Erick 0:00

Do you approach problems from only one perspective? Are there ways that you could expand your understanding and incorporate different perspectives? Well, today I want to talk about the power of multi-perspective thinking and how it can help you dig deeper into challenges in your own life. Hello, friends. My name is Erick Cloward and welcome to the Stoic Coffee Break. The Stoic Coffee Break is a weekly podcast where I take aspects of Stoicism and do my best to break them down to their most important points. I pull from ancient and modern wisdom, as well as areas like psychology and neuroscience, anything that I can find that can help you to think better, because I believe if you think better, you can live better. This week's episode is called Multi-Perspective Thinking: How to Make Better Decisions in Four Steps. Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth. Marcus Aurelius. So Socrates and several of his friends went to see the Oracle at Delphi. And one of their group, Sheriff, asked the Oracle, Is any man wiser than Socrates? The Oracle responded, Of all men, Socrates is the most wise. Now, Socrates, on hearing this, was shocked. He didn't consider himself wise. He was so full of questions about everything. He felt like the oracle must be wrong. So he set out to prove them wrong. He made it his quest that he would speak to every wise man he could find in order to find one wiser than him. Lucky for us, he lost that quest. Now, why was Socrates considered so wise? It wasn't because he had all the answers, it was because he had so many questions. He wanted to understand, and he felt the only way he could truly understand something was to interrogate it as deeply as possible. He even said, wonder is the beginning of wisdom, and wisdom was what he was after. So why do we like to have the answers? We love to have the answers because answers are safe. They feel solid, they offer security and comfort. We feel good when we have an answer. Questions, on the other hand, disrupt. They're ambiguous, they're insecure, they rock the boat and tilt the world. Questions examine, probe, and uncover. And we feel uncomfortable when faced with a powerful question. We often grab onto the first answer we find because we don't like the discomfort. But questions are where the power lies. Answers are brittle. Questions are resilient. And we've all experienced the power of questions with children. I mean, how many times has your answer been destroyed with a simple question from a child? People in power don't like questions because questions expose ignorance and weakness. I mean, have you ever had a know-it-all boss who shot down hard questions because it threatened their ego? When you approach life with questions, you approach things with wonder, curiosity, and flexibility. When you have all the answers, you're static, unyielding, and stuck. And this is why Socrates said, I know that I am intelligent because I know that I know nothing. And it wasn't because he was stupid, it was because he knew that any answer that he could come up with could and should be challenged. Everything that he knew could be wrong. So one of the biggest things that keeps us from trying to discover the truth in conversations and debates is that we want to be right. We come in with a preconceived notion, and our only goal is to win. Socrates, on the other hand, wanted the truth, even if it meant that his first ideas about something were later proved wrong. In his quest to find the wisest man, he often spoke with Sophists. Now, the Sophists of Socrates' times were rhetoricians who were skilled speakers and very persuasive. But for the Sophists, it was more important to win the argument than it was to actually find the truth. They would even debate on topics that they knew very little about, but could speak so persuasively that they would often win the debate. So we see the same approach with online debates all the time. The goal is to defend a point of view rather than to actually discuss, critique, and maybe change minds. The problem with this type of debating is that rarely does anyone go away any wiser. They usually are even more entrenched in their own point of view. When Socrates spoke with somebody who considered themselves wise, he exposed their ignorance by asking questions. He didn't set out to beat them or to win. He was earnestly seeking wisdom. And he found the only way to get there wasn't by simply asking for answers, but to methodically ask good questions. So why do we prefer being right over finding the truth? Well, it feeds our ego. It feels good to think that we're right. We feel superior. And the thing is, is that our education system reinforces this way of thinking. We get used to being rewarded for having the right answer rather than for working through how to come to a good answer. So I had a coaching client who had this show up in a very interesting way. His company is in an emerging industry, and often they're discovering the path forward. The arguments they'd have over the right solutions often became heated because each person on the team wanted their solution to win. As the manager, he found it challenging to get them to collaborate on trying to find the best solution. Because they're developing a whole new product, they sometimes have to change direction and look at other options that were put forward earlier. This often led to the person with the newly selected idea to get upset because they felt that their idea should have been chosen in the first place, basically saying, I told you so. They would also use this as leverage later on, saying, Remember you didn't listen to me before when I was right? Now, when we're focused on being right rather than finding the truth, then we remain in ignorance and error. We're more focused on feeding our ego than growing and learning. And we should be willing to be proven wrong. So Socrates pointed out that the winner of an argument actually loses because they still hold the same opinion that they had before. On the other hand, the person who loses has been able to discover where they were wrong and actually learned something. One of the most powerful tools that Socrates employed was his ability to discuss things from multiple perspectives. Because he wasn't trying to prove his point of view, but rather find the truth, he wasn't attached to a particular outcome. He could take a point of view and follow it down a path of reasoning, only to contradict it later when they uncovered better conclusions. So John Stuart Mill summed it up nicely. He who knows only his side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them, but if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as even know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion. This is why it is important to have different perspectives. We need to be able to see challenges more holistically. If we only know one perspective, we aren't seeing the whole picture. So why do we struggle with looking at things from multiple perspectives? Well, I like how Anayas Nan put it. We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are. We like to be right, and it feels good to be right. We like, we also try to protect our identity and our worldview. We like to think that we're smart and can come up with the best solution. We have an idea, and rather than trying to disprove it, we do our best to prove that it's the right one. Other perspectives show us where we might be wrong, and that can bruise our ego. As Brene Brown explains, we can choose courage or we can choose comfort, but we can't have both, not at the same time. It takes courage to sit in that discomfort, but the discomfort of being wrong is worth the price paying to reach a better conclusion. So, how can we get better at interrogating a problem and seeing it from multiple perspectives? Obviously, talking with others about their perspectives on something is very useful. But we need to be sure that we seek out those who have different perspectives and not just find those who agree with us. We also need to actually listen to opposing perspectives and not get defensive if they poke holes in our perspective. As F. Scott Gerald put it, the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. So another way we can do this is to practice on ourselves. We can play our own critic, we can be our own devil's advocate. So I put together a simple exercise that you can do which can help you see things from multiple perspectives. So the first thing to do is to write out your point of view, list all the facts as best you can, and list out your opinions about the situation and what logic you use to come to your conclusion. Then, critique your analysis from the opposing viewpoint. Try to poke as many holes in it as possible. Next, synthesize both perspectives by taking the best from each and integrating them. Finally, critique it one more time from a contrarian perspective. Look for things that might be missing, such as could the whole idea be wrong? Is this solving the real problem? Did I even ask the right question in the first place? So, what does this look like? Well, let's use this exercise and a practical example. Now, let's say that I decided that I wasn't disciplined enough and I needed to be more disciplined. I'd sit down, I'd write down my point of view. What are the facts? Well, I skip workouts, I procrastinate on projects, I can't stick to routines. So my opinion is that I like discipline and willpower. And the logic that I came to my conclusion was successful people have discipline, I don't, therefore, I need more of it. So let's take an opposing viewpoint and critique that. So first, I've successfully maintained lots of things: friendships, jobs, hobbies I care about. Maybe it's not discipline that I lack, but genuine interest in these specific things. I have a lot of expectations about how I should be acting. Who am I comparing myself to? So let's take those two different points of views and synthesize them together. I do struggle with consistency in certain areas, but it's specifically in areas where I'm forcing myself based on external expectations. The things I naturally maintain are things that align with my actual values. Now let's do a one last critique from the contrarian point of view. Maybe this is the wrong question entirely. Maybe it's not how do I get more disciplined? Maybe the real question is, what do I actually value and am I pursuing that or someone else's version of success? Maybe my lack of discipline is data telling me I'm climbing the wrong mountain. So the reason I like this exercise is that it's far more powerful than just a pro and con list. It's about questioning judgments in an impartial way, and it helps uncover the real issue, which can lead to a better solution. So, in conclusion, it can be challenging to think outside of our own point of view. It's not something that comes easy to most of us. This is why Socrates was such an exceptional thinker and why he often made others uncomfortable. He wasn't afraid to ask the hard questions, take contrarian positions to uncover deeper truths, and more importantly, he wasn't afraid to be wrong. When you take various perspectives, then you're allowing yourself to explore the issue from multiple sides. It gives you a deeper understanding and helps you to get to the root of the actual issue. It's okay to be wrong, and sometimes you get further by trying to disprove your initial conclusions. So the next time you're facing a challenge or having a debate, ask yourself: do I want to win or do I want to find the truth? And that's the end of this week's stoic coffee break. As always, be kind to yourself, be kind to others, and thanks for listening. Also, if you haven't purchased my book Stoicism 101, I would really appreciate it. You can find out more about that on my website at stoic.coffee. Also, if you haven't found me on social media, you can do that as well. You can find me on Instagram and threads at stoic.coffee, and on YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn at stoiccoffee all one award. Thanks again for listening.