We all unavoidably misunderstand how our own minds work. Consequently, our “How-I-Changed” stories are certainly inaccurate and can even amount to lies. These stories can be laughable, crippling, dangerous, helpful, empowering and many more things, but they are almost inevitably inaccurate while we perceive otherwise. For one of the very adaptive skills of the human mind is self-deceit.
I can’t seem to stop writing on this theme. As you see above, I have attempt to draw yet another sketch to capture how I visualize our silliness. This picture is one of my stories about how my mind works. My story is obviously mechanistic and clearly informed by my time in history with models from physics, physiology, computers and such things. It is an unabashed modular view of mind — with all it’s apparent concomitant challenges. But it is one of my stories, so I’m putting it out there.
Here are some of the principles I try to capture in this diagram:
- We are unaware of most of the mechanism behind our actions and thoughts
- Our mind unconsciously generates the mix of conscious and unconscious
- Our stories are thus generated with this
- Our stories are often post hoc myths based on limited and biased info
- Our stories influence our thinking
See my index post “My Cognitive Narrative” for related posts.
Question to Readers: Tell me what you think. Got a better or different story? Try to sketch it out and post it on your blog.
Triangulations 
I like your diagram. 🙂 At some level, I wonder if it is important not to realize how our minds work to build our “me” story. Having a narrative, accurate or (mostly) inaccurate, helps us think we are a little more than just the cumulative total of effects from a lifetime of causes, even it our narrative does read out like a series of life-changing cause-effect moments. 😉