REASONING BY ANALOGY

Comparing ourselves to others is human nature. Even if it’s inaccurate, it’s a safety mechanism we use to give us a sense of how we’re doing and where we might be going. By comparing our situation to that of another, we make connections from our own unknown future to someone else’s present. This is called “Reasoning by Analogy.”

The problem with this way of thinking is that it can be pretty darn inaccurate. Seeing how someone else has responded to a certain treatment or tool or approach doesn’t really give us good information about how we’ll do, even if they have the same symptom or diagnosis.

And when we don’t respond how someone else has, it leads to unnecessary frustration.

Instead, we can use Systems Thinking to figure out what we need to do and what we should do next based on how we respond.