[Financial Freedom] How to effectively improve metacognitive ability

【Review】

The most important ability you should have

Metacognitive ability is very important. It affects almost every aspect of a person’s entire life...

Then how can we improve this ability through Deliberate Practice?

1. Sit-Enjoy

Sit-enjoy （坐享） is a Chinese vocabulary that I had to create - just to distinguish this deliberate exercise from religious activities. In distinguish this deliberate exercise from religious activities. In various discourse systems, this deliberate exercise has different names: sit in meditation, Zen, vipassana, meditation, etc.

This deliberate training is very simple:

Find a timer, timing more than 15 minutes (slowly extend later);
Find a comfortable position (at first it is not necessary to use the “correct posture” that is not used, but it is better to “straighten the back”);
Close your eyes (someone can do it even if they blink);
Breathe slowly and evenly (it doesn’t have to be deliberately controlled);
Put all your attention on your breath (don’t care about your own distracted, if you find yourself distracted then back).

It’s not easy at first, because you can’t be careful when you find it. When you find it, you already think of something else for a long time... But this is precisely the point of deliberate training: take all your attention focused on one point - in the current training, it is your breath.

You start to hear your own breathing, you can feel the temperature of the air in and out of the breath, and the difference between the length of time you call and breathe, and the rhythm sometimes gets messed up... But, you have no experience and will distracted and start to notice something other than breathing, such as the noise outside the window, the ups and downs of the chest, etc... So, you can begin to realize that it is not easy to concentrate all your attention.

And it is precisely this “not easy” that is the core of the whole deliberate training: your metacognitive ability is activated, and then you use it repeatedly to adjust your attention and put all your attention in one place.

You can think of metacognitive ability as a kind of brain muscle. It’s like when we are in poor health, exercise is enough - play with a dumbbell for a while, the arm will become thicker, for deep squat a period of time, the thigh will become thick, and for a while push-ups, the pectoral muscle will change thick... To enjoy this deliberate exercise, will make you more and more metacognitive ability.

However, please believe me, this does not require talent. This is something that everyone can do, regardless of age, regardless of gender, all people in ancient and modern China and foreign countries, as long as you try hard, eventually everyone can do it.

Nowadays, there is scientific evidence that this deliberate training can directly increase the surface area of cerebral cortex of trainers. There is a lot of folds on the surface of the cerebral cortex (also called "Sulcus"), and the increase in the surface area of the cerebral cortex is actually the result of an increase in sulcus. Can you imagine the benefits of this deliberate training on the brain?

References: Meditation experience is associated with increased cortical thickness
http://t.cn/zOE2WPn

In fact, this is a long-established method of deliberate training. It is only that the results of a complete scientific study that has begun in recent years can be used to clearly explain its role and mechanism. Therefore, we can do without religion. Naturally adopting this simple and deliberate training method is a simple, and effective "brain gymnastics."

Sometimes, there may be some illusions in the sit-enjoy. In the past, if it was explained in religious terms, it would be “possessed by the Devil” and then the countermeasures would be “finding a law enforcement” and the like. Actually, there is no such thing as “possessed by the Devil”—the hallucinations are essentially the same as dreams. When the attention is focused on one place but not on thinking, the brain is equivalent to being actively interested in relaxing. In this state, there are some brain cells that are not related to each other. "Accidental contact" ... ... to put it another way, is to "actively dream", of course, there are good and bad dreams. However, rational people know that nightmares are not terrible, because they are not realistic.

Searching for “Meditation” on the Internet will have a lot of tutorials. However, I think the above text is already the most streamlined and most complete tutorial, and it is not necessary to be so complicated. In addition, the most important and core advice that can be obtained from me is:

This is a very clear and simple brain gymnastics that has now been scientifically explained. There is no need to deify it- it is used naturally then enough.

2.Interest

Although each person’s interests are different, it is easy for everyone to get into a state of concentration when they are doing something that they are interested in. (In the past few years, a fashionable English word has emerged, Flow, said that state).

Preoccupation is another effective method for deliberately training metacognitive abilities - there are a few methods that are counterintuitive:

By fully concentrating on the state of mind, the ability to metacognize is completely relaxed...

I personally discovered early on that “teaching is the best way to learn.” Therefore, I actually had a lot of “teaching experience” long before I entered the education industry. However, one observation was indeed not noticed until after many years of real entry into the education industry:

Most people did not develop even one of their true interests when they reached adulthood.

In other words:
Most people basically have nothing to feel worthwhile (self-consciously) to do on “concentrate”...

Concentration is actually divided into two kinds: active and passive. Passive preoccupation most people often experience, such as reading novels, watching movies, playing games, and so on. This kind of rapt attention actually comes from external controls. Designers of novels, films and games are “experts that plunder other’s attention.” They know how to design to make people excited, make people addicted, make people inseparable, and even use all the psychological research results to control themselves “prey”.

What we are saying here is actually “actively engrossed in concentration.” Active concentration is more than passive at least one dimension:

Focus on improving a particular skill.

Everyone’s interests vary from person to person. Some people like to cultivate flowers and plants, some people like to play the piano, some people like to dance, some people like to run, some people like to make large models... In any interest, there is “must be done to practice “progressive skills” to meet this requirement, the concentration of attention generated by interest can only be active, it may be helpful to deliberately train metacognitive ability.

When recalling my personal experience, this kind of “actively engrossing” that benefited me most came from my hobby: playing a guitar. Funny to say, my first guitar came this way:

My father found out that I sand out of tune and said, “ears are not allowed to listen, singing off tune? How can you learn English well?” So he bought a very cheap guitar for me...

In that era, novices are learn the same tune, Romance of Love - a tune that you can hear whatever right or wrong both better song even if the rhythm is not so accurate (you can see this tune has numerous ways to play on Youtube).

In the years that followed, I would just pick up the guitar and play this piece of music without any difficulty. I could play for an hour. Although many years later, I still did it common, but I was always a little better than I did in the past - After waiting a few years, when I read the literature on metacognitive ability and brain science, I discovered that I pick up cheap. Although I didn’t have much interest, I actually had to another great benefit: the deliberate training of metacognitive abilities is more than a lot of people do not know how much.

When one concentrates on any skill, the metacognitive ability is completely relaxed, and all attention is used to feel the sensation of each sense, and then adjust each of their own actions, even each consciousness and understanding, and finally reach the ratio of in the better stage of the previous moment, in this process, more sulcus formations in the cerebral cortex are formed, and more actions become “subconsciously complete” actions... Once again, metacognitive abilities were activated, clearly aware of everything that has just happened, “suddenly born” of happiness, and because of the existence of metacognitive abilities, the happiness is particularly strong.

So, it is very important to find a kind of skill that can get yourself into the “active state of mind” and even the interest of “simply not stop”. It is very important, even the absolutely “indispensable” content in life.

3.Introspection

The so-called “reflect yourself three times a day” is not a habit that saints should have. This is almost the most efficient way to deliberately train metacognitive ability. So this should be something everyone does every day.

Spend about ten minutes a day and reflect on your own thinking, think about is there are any logical errors in your thinking? Think about where your ideas come from? Why did you take such a train of thought? Is there any other possible result of thinking? Think about what factors have influenced you? Does it make sense to wonder if there are foundations for those factors?

In my personal impression, the introspection activity was often “distracted in the process”. You will feel very chaos in the start, thinking about even a headache... I guess most people just give up. However, after the age of 26, the sensation suddenly became clear, the efficiency of distracted suddenly rose dramatically, and time for making revisions became decisive. I guess this is also a kind of accumulation.

What many people did not think of is that reflection is not only a method of deliberate training of metacognitive abilities but also a fundamental way of adjusting emotions.

In reality, we can see many examples - those who cannot control emotions not only do not make any meaningful things, but also often become time bomb, sooner or later destroy everything they touch, whether it is people or things.

However, how can we control emotions?

Observations and studies consistently show that controlling emotions, like controlling time, is almost futile. Calminess is often not the result of controlling emotions, but rather “recognizing the source of emotions and finding the solution”. And to recognize the source of emotion is to call metacognitive ability.

“I’m angry” and “I know I’m angry now”. There is a huge difference between the two. The former can only be more angry at the next minute, but because the metacognitive ability is activated, the latter can turn its attention to “Why I am angry” and find out why I was angry and then Focus on the emotional issue. If we can solve it, we can solve it, and if we can’t solve it, we can also think about it. Since we can’t solve it, we can’t be angry...

Therefore, every time the source of the emotions is recognized, it is a great opportunity for a metacognitive ability to gain exercise. Everyone is the same, and eventually they will find that the most reflective ones are definitely the behaviors and decisions that are influenced by emotions. However, its practicality is not many times. The timely activation of metacognitive ability will become a habit, and the so-called calmness is only the natural result of this habit.

Thinking and Action

1.Reflect on the recent emotional out of control, think carefully about the root cause of loss of control? How can we solve the problem thoroughly and then we will not get out of control for such things the next time?
2.If you have children, how should you deliberately train your child’s metacognitive skills from now on?
3.If you have a wife or husband, a male or female friend, how do you collaborate with each other to train metacognitive abilities?
4.Through observation, reading, and thinking, to study the role of metacognitive ability in social activities, which aspects are particularly important?
5.How can I think about the future and reflect on my introspection completely as part of my life? It is like brushing my teeth and didn’t do it then feel uncomfortable.