Motley Fool Money - Making Solomon’s Paradox Work for You

Episode Date: August 4, 2020

Solomon’s Paradox, the ability to think more sensibly about other people’s problems than our own, is common. In her book Weird: The Power of Being an Outsider in an Insider World, Olga Khazan shares how people can use Solomon’s Paradox to their own advantage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Gig speeds available via hot spots to Comcast Business and mobile customers only. Actual Wi-Fi speeds vary, not guaranteed. With the Motley Full Money Extra, I'm Chris Hill. If you're better at thinking critically about other people's situations than you are at thinking about your own, well, you're not alone. It's called Solomon's Paradox, and it's basically the ability to think more reasonably about another person's problems than your own. Olga Kazan is a writer for the Atlantic, and this is something she covered in her book Weird, The Power of Being an outsider in an insider world. As she tells it, there is a way to use Solomon's paradox to your own advantage.

There's a lot of research that shows that thinking about your problems from a third person perspective can help you make a better decision or just kind of see the light at the end of the tunnel where you weren't able to before. It could be as simple as instead of saying, like, I need to decide what to do, say to yourself like Olga needs to decide what she's going to do. And this can be really helpful in a number of experiences. I write about it as applied to people who had a big crisis in their lives because they were different and they felt this like extreme alienation from other people around them. But you could also use this if you're like deciding between two different jobs or two different places to live or you know something else where

you have to kind of give yourself advice. And the best way to think of it really is as you're giving yourself advice because people tend to provide better advice when they think of themselves as like a different person because it just helps remove you from that immediate situation that you're too close to. I'm Chris Hill. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.