Right but this is tricky… Partly because it’s hard to stay aware and mindful of the need to update our thinking. Meta-cognition is just hard.

But I also suspect that facing our own minds is tough because we worry what we’ll find there and how we’ll feel as a result. I think we often stay stuck in an outdated mental pattern because is allows us to avoid the emotions that might/will go along with updates.

This is getting meta… but the habit of not updating our out of date thinking patterns is itself functional in that it helps us avoid potential emotional pain. At some point (childhood) we may not have been well-equipped to deal with this, so we carry this meta-strategy of not updating our thinking with us into adulthood. Maybe…