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The second king of Israel, Solomon is sometimes called “the wisest man who ever lived”. Those who have asked for his advice have come away with perfect answers to even the most delicate problems, even if he had to threatened to cut a baby in half. But Solomon’s own life was a shit show. He had hundreds of wives and concubines (which sounds sexy at first, but imagine trying to navigate that amount of polyamory, or having hundreds of people telling you to take out the trash). He gave in to his basest desires, worshiped false idols even though he was on good terms with God himself, and generally arranged everything so badly that it led to the downfall of his entire nation. In other words, Solomon could advise everyone except himself.

What is Solomon’s paradox?

Our ability to reason about the lives and problems of others while being unable to do so for ourselves has been dubbed “Solomon’s paradox,” and the phenomenon has been widely studied by social scientists. Research supports the idea: we really are better at understanding and solving other people’s problems than at tackling our own. We are able to take a look at someone in a toxic relationship and see that they would be better off if they left and make a realistic plan for their graceful exit. We yell at horror movie characters because they go their separate ways instead of sticking together. We are able to imagine how a person’s life should be and the steps they would take to get there.

But when it comes to our own lives, things get complicated. We stay in dead-end jobs, make foolish financial decisions, and stay in dead-end relationships until the end. If we were characters in a horror movie, we’d be screaming at each other until we were hoarse. But luckily I know exactly how you can get out of this existential escape room. I can not tell myself how to escape it, but that is the paradox.

Start by separating yourself

Research conducted by Igor Grossmann and Ethan Kross clearly outlines a possible solution to Solomon’s paradox: come out of yourself. Study subjects who were instructed to “draw away from oneself” as opposed to “immerse themselves” saw the asymmetry typical of Solomon’s paradox disappear, so this is not an inescapable pitfall (du least as part of this social science experiment) as long as you can see yourself in third person instead of first person. This is of course not an easy thing to do. It reminds me of a barber trying to cut his hair, but there are techniques you can try that might help you get a little closer to yourself.

Talk to yourself about yourself

There are a ton of “tricks” or techniques you can employ to give yourself the illusion of distance and the more objective wisdom that might bring. Some recommend talking to each other. Wait until everyone is out of the house, look in the mirror, and discuss your issues. Or, more realistically, imagine yourself in a therapist’s office, listening to a sympathetic bartender, or in the elaborate throne room of King Solomon himself, but try not to embody the ” role” of yourself in this scenario. Try thinking like the listener rather than the speaker and imagine what your problems would look like to another wiser person. Do not attach any emotion to your descriptions – we are only looking for solutions here, not an emotional discharge. Then imagine what that other person would advise you to do.

Will talking in a mirror help you come up with a plan worthy of Solomon? Probably not. But I suspect you will, at the very least, have something new to think about.

Yes, I will suggest “logging”

Another tool toward personal Solomonic wisdom is journaling. Write things down, but only the facts. Remember you are not trying to entertain anyone else, no one is going to read this except yourself, so just keep an accurate record of your experiences. Then let it sit for a few weeks. When your journal has had time to mellow, clear your mind of distractions and read it as if you were reading a novel written from a first-person perspective. Ask yourself what you would advise the main character to do. It might even help you put things in a third-person perspective to use a text-to-speech program to tell you about your experiences.

Use the “strangers on a train” approach

This technique isn’t backed by science and is a terrible idea, but consider the “strangers on a train” approach – it’s the kind of original thought King “just cut the baby in half” might have appealed to Solomon. . In Alfred Hitchcock’s 1951 thriller Strangers on a train, two men who do not know each other agree to commit the murder of the other to each have an alibi. I’m not suggesting homicide, but I a m suggesting that you entrust your life decisions to an acquaintance or a stranger (it wouldn’t work as well if it was someone you were close to) and that you do the same for them. That way, each of you could make rational, sensible decisions, without the subjective mess of emotions and trauma that typically guides our decision-making.

“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of!” you may be thinking, and you’re right. It’s a ridiculous scenario that could lead to a number of bad outcomes, and the odds of finding someone else to go along with this cockamamie scheme are extremely slim. But I brought it up so you can imagine what a thoughtful stranger might say about your problems, and imagine how much better off you’d be if you actually followed their suggestions. If you were to text this hypothetical stranger on a train, a brief description of the dilemma you’re facing, such as, “Should I go to the gym or watch three more episodes of Unsolved mysteries,“I think you know the answer you would get. So go with that. I bet it’ll beat what you did.